Guides
Answers to the questions I get before a project.
Each guide answers one question that companies in the UAE ask me about AI, and links to the case studies behind the answer.
Guide
ADGM Data Protection Regulations 2021 and AI, explained
Who must follow ADGM's Data Protection Regulations 2021, the one section that names AI, sending personal data to AI vendors, and what I would build.
Read the guide →AI automation
AI automation in the UAE: what to automate first
AI automation for UAE companies: what to automate first and how to measure it. In one business unit, the work of 30 people now takes 11.
Read the guide →Arabic OCR
Arabic OCR in 2026: 14 engines on UAE laws and real scans
I tested 14 Arabic OCR engines and AI models on UAE law pages, scanned books and phone photos. Gemini leads; Tesseract got 1 character in 5 wrong.
Read the guide →Arabic OCR
Arabic PDF to Word or text: why copy-paste fails
Converting an Arabic PDF to Word or text? Copy-paste often reverses letters. On UAE law PDFs the best of 7 extractors got 7.6% of characters wrong, OCR 0.2%.
Read the guide →Arabic OCR
Image to Arabic text: what works on photos and scans
I tested 6 OCR engines on photos and scans of printed Arabic pages. On one-page photos, Apple got 8.5% of characters wrong and Tesseract 38.1%.
Read the guide →Arabic OCR
PaddleOCR on Arabic scans: blank pages and the fix
PaddleOCR 3 returned blank pages, with no error, on 15 of 49 Arabic scans. Why its text detector loses every line, and the setting that fixes it.
Read the guide →Abu Dhabi
Software and app development in Abu Dhabi
Software and app development for Abu Dhabi companies by a senior engineer: a Top 5 App Store app, a SaaS built and sold, 400M+ events a month.
Read the guide →Arabic OCR
Surya OCR on Arabic: tested on 100 pages
Surya OCR on Arabic: 3.9% of characters wrong on 44 real scans and photos, the best of six engines. How I ran it on a Mac, and where it slipped.
Read the guide →Guide
ChatGPT Business, Enterprise or private AI for a UAE company
What ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, Copilot and Gemini do with company data, what can stay in the UAE, and when a private AI setup is worth it.
Read the guide →Guide
Company brain: AI that answers from your own documents
A company brain answers staff questions from your own documents, with a source on every answer and access rules enforced inside the search. How I build one.
Read the guide →Guide
DIFC Data Protection Law and AI: Regulation 10 explained
Who must follow DIFC Data Protection Law No. 5 of 2020, what Regulation 10 requires of AI systems and since when, the 2025 changes, and what to build.
Read the guide →Guide
How to choose an AI company in the UAE: 10 questions
Ten questions to ask AI companies in the UAE before you sign, and what weak and good answers sound like, from an engineer who ships AI to production.
Read the guide →Legal AI
Legal AI for law firms in the UAE
Legal AI for UAE law firms: an assistant that answers from the law and your firm's documents, and checks every citation. In production for a regulated client.
Read the guide →Guide
UAE PDPL and AI: using ChatGPT with personal data
What the UAE PDPL means when staff paste client data into ChatGPT: legal bases, transfers abroad, rights, breaches, and the regulations still missing in 2026.
Read the guide →