Abu Dhabi Says OpenAI-Built System Cuts Some Food Import Approvals From Days to Minutes

Faisal Al Hawi, director of the AI Factory at the Abu Dhabi Department of Government Enablement, said approvals that used to take "a few days to a week" now take "literally minutes," according to EnterpriseAM. The department has not published how many applications have gone through the system or how accurate its assessments have been.

The result matters because food imports are only the first service. Officials have named building permits, business licences and inspections as the next services to move onto the system, and all three are routine sources of delay for companies operating in the emirate. The work is part of Abu Dhabi's goal of becoming the world's first AI-native government by the end of 2027.

The system converts thousands of food import policy documents into a format that AI models can read. Each import application is checked against those rules, and the model passes its findings to officials, who make the final decision. When the programme was announced, the government said every assessment could be traced to the specific rule it relied on, and that officials would remain responsible for the outcome. The pilot is running at the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority.

The Machine-Readable Government initiative was one of four agreements OpenAI signed in Abu Dhabi on November 2, after Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan met OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman. The second is a multi-year deal under which ADNOC will work with OpenAI and G42 to draw up oilfield development plans with AI, aiming to cut planning time "from months to hours". Those models will run on G42 infrastructure in the UAE.

In the third agreement, sovereign investor Mubadala will use work by OpenAI and G42's subsidiary Inception42 to analyse investments and assess risk. The fourth is a five-year agreement between Inception42 and OpenAI to help government agencies, businesses and educational institutions across the UAE adopt advanced AI models.

The department has given no timetable for extending the system beyond food imports, and has not said when it will publish case numbers or accuracy data for the pilot.