News
Dubai Roads & Transport Authority Introduces Smart Solutions
A range of innovative digital services now aid mobility and improve efficiency.

Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has introduced a range of smart technology solutions to automate services and make life easier and more convenient for citizens as the Emirate continues its digital transformation plan leading up to 2025.
Here are some of the services that have been improved using cutting-edge tech:
Smart Kiosks
Citizens can now renew vehicle registrations, pay parking fines, and recharge their nol cards 24/7 at 32 separate smart kiosks featuring biometric login. In total, 28 digital services are available, with payment options including cash, credit cards, and NFC digital wallets.
Taxi App
As well as an hourly rental service, residents and tourists can book taxis and limos 24 hours a day. The new Dubai Taxi Corporation app also features a “Lost and Found” section, along with location sharing, route details, and estimated arrival times.
nol Pay App
An updated version of the nol Pay app can now be used for transport fares, parking, tourist attractions, and even shopping. Instant balance top-ups are available, along with integration of digital IDs for simplified registration.
Driving Licenses
A “Click and Drive” initiative for obtaining driving licenses has digitized the entire admin process, reducing wait times by 75%. The new service even includes a mobile eye-testing facility.
Free Parking Permits
Parking permits are now available digitally and don’t need to be printed or displayed. The service allows users to add up to 5 vehicles, with each activated at a time through the RTA Dubai app.
Unified Booking
The RTA plans to streamline transport bookings and tickets over the next couple of years, unifying regulations across all providers, which currently includes the likes of Careem, Udrive, Uber, ekar, and Hala.
News
Google Releases Veo 2 AI Video Tool To MENA Users
The state-of-the-art video generation model is now available in Gemini, offering realistic AI-generated videos with better physics, motion, and detail.

Starting today, users of Gemini Advanced in the MENA region — and globally — can tap into Veo 2, Google’s next-generation video model.
Originally unveiled in 2024, Veo 2 has now been fully integrated into Gemini, supporting multiple languages including Arabic and English. The rollout now brings Google’s most advanced video AI directly into the hands of everyday users.
Veo 2 builds on the foundations of its predecessor with a more sophisticated understanding of the physical world. It’s designed to produce high-fidelity video content with cinematic detail, realistic motion, and greater visual consistency across a wide range of subjects and styles. Whether recreating natural landscapes, human interactions, or stylized environments, the model is capable of interpreting and translating written prompts into eight-second 720p videos that feel almost handcrafted.
Users can generate content directly through the Gemini platform — either via the web or mobile apps. The experience is pretty straightforward: users enter a text-based prompt, and Veo 2 returns a video in 16:9 landscape format, delivered as an MP4 file. These aren’t just generic clips — they can reflect creative, abstract, or highly specific scenarios, making the tool especially useful for content creators, marketers, or anyone experimenting with visual storytelling.
Also Read: Getting Started With Google Gemini: A Beginner’s Guide
To ensure transparency, each video is embedded with SynthID — a digital watermark developed by Google’s DeepMind. The watermark is invisible to the human eye but persists across editing, compression, and sharing. It identifies the video as AI-generated, addressing concerns around misinformation and media authenticity.
While Veo 2 is still in its early phases of public rollout, the technology is part of a broader push by Google to democratize advanced AI tools. With text-to-image, code generation, and now video creation integrated into Gemini, Google is positioning the platform as a full-spectrum creative assistant.
Access to Veo 2 starts today and will continue expanding in the coming weeks. Interested users can try it out at gemini.google.com or through the Gemini app on Android and iOS.