News

Dubai Starts App Development Program To Train 1,000 Emiratis

The scheme, called “Create Apps in Dubai” should triple the number of app creators by 2025.

Published

2 years ago

March 30, 2023

Nour Nasir

dubai starts app development program to train 1000 emiratis

Emirates News Agency

On Wednesday, Dubai’s Crown Prince, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, launched a new ecosystem for developing digital applications and growing the pool of local talent within the emirate.

The scheme, known as Create Apps in Dubai, aims to transform Dubai into one of the world’s “most attractive destinations” for business opportunities. By 2025, the program should also have trained over 1,000 Emiratis and tripled the number of app creators. Additionally, 100 new national app projects will become available in digital stores over the next two years.

create apps in dubai event chamber for digital economy

“The exponential growth of digital applications and platforms has created a new global competition for technological leadership. Dubai seeks to be at the forefront of this global race by providing a platform for fostering the development of 1,000 highly-skilled UAE nationals whose ideas and innovation will create a vibrant applications sector in Dubai,” says Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai.

Dubai is seeking to solidify its position as a global capital of the digital economy, with the Dubai Economic Agenda (D33) plan preparing to help 30 private companies achieve $1 billion in value.

Also Read: ChatGPT Is Accelerating The AI Revolution In The Middle East

With global smartphone sales exceeding $448 billion and 2 million new apps and games created in 2021 alone, the sector represents a massive opportunity for investors, entrepreneurs and tech startups to thrive.

Create Apps in Dubai will be overseen by the Dubai Chamber for Digital Economy, and support development plans to “empower UAE citizens to play key roles in realizing the country’s digital vision”, a recent statement said.

The UAE’s digital economy will be worth $140 billion by 2031, up from nearly $38 billion, according to recent figures from the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy.

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.

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

Nour Nasir

Google

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.