OpenAI tech is making it faster for food importers in Abu Dhabi to clear their paperwork

A deal between the Abu Dhabi government and OpenAI is paying off big, the emirate’s Department of Government Enablement (DGE) told The National. The project, which began early in the year but was announced last week, has cut the process of approving some complex food import cases from “a few days to a week” down to “literally minutes,” Faisal Al Hawi, director of DGE’s AI Factory, says.

How it works: Thousands of policy documents on food imports have been turned into a format AI can read. The AI checks each import application against the rules, then hands its findings to officials, who make the final call. “AI did a lot of the heavy lifting,” Al Hawi said.

Coming next: Building permits, business licenses, and inspections are among the next services being targeted. This is the first pilot of a “Machine-Readable Government” system, as we noted last week, and part of a larger Abu Dhabi effort to become the world’s first AI-native government by the end of 2027.

Caveat: The National didn’t report how many cases have gone through the system or how accurate it’s been.