A new study has positioned Saudi Arabia at the forefront of developing Arabic large language models (LLMs), highlighting the Kingdom’s pivotal role in enhancing the Arabic language’s presence in the global digital landscape. The research was conducted by the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) in collaboration with the King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language (KSGAAL).
The study aims to bolster the Arabic AI ecosystem by identifying key requirements for building more advanced models capable of understanding diverse dialects, generating content, and executing complex instructions.
The State of Arabic AI
The report identified over 53 Arabic language models developed as of the first quarter of 2025, with Saudi Arabia leading the list of countries contributing to this growth. It traces the evolution of these models from early rule-based systems to the current era of sophisticated generative applications.
Despite the growing international interest in Arabic-supportive AI, the study revealed a significant gap in investment for models supporting audio and visual formats. Text-only models currently account for 81% of the total, while more advanced multimodal models represent just 7%, pointing to a key area for future development.
Benchmarking Against Global Peers
According to the BALSAM benchmark, which compares the performance of Arabic LLMs with global counterparts, international models still outperform in most linguistic skill categories.
However, the findings also highlighted promising capabilities within some Arabic models. They demonstrated a slight edge in specific tasks like summarization and achieved comparable performance in creative writing and reading comprehension, indicating a strong foundation for future advancements.
A Roadmap for Regional Leadership
To solidify its leadership position, the study outlines a strategic roadmap with several key recommendations. These include a focus on curating high-quality Arabic data that covers a wide range of dialects and domains.
Further steps involve developing models with varied sizes and multiple capabilities, establishing robust Arabic benchmarks to accurately assess model quality, and actively supporting the adoption of these technologies by both public and private institutions across the region. This initiative is part of the Kingdom’s broader commitment to integrating its linguistic and cultural identity with technological progress, ensuring Arabic remains a vital language within the global AI ecosystem.
About SDAIA
The Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) is the competent authority in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for data and AI, including big data. It is the national reference in all matters related to the organization, development, and handling of data and AI, and all related matters. SDAIA is mandated to drive the national data and AI agenda to position the Kingdom as a global leader in the elite league of data-driven economies.
Source: Zawya
