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J·Index / Countries / Saudi Arabia

AI in Saudi Arabia's news media

9 verified, source-linked AI implementations across 7 news organizations, 2018–2026.
Middle East and North Africa2018–2026
Cases
9
Organizations
7
Active since
2018
Controversies
0

What AI is used for — and how that differs

Saudi Arabiaworldwide sharepp = percentage-point difference
Transcription & Translation2+19pp
AI Avatars / Synthetic Presenters2+19pp
Content Production & Automation1-3pp
Editorial Workflow & Writing Assistance1-5pp
Workflow & Operations (General)1+8pp
Advertising & Ad Operations1+10pp
Distribution & Discovery1+8pp

How far adoption has gone

1 – Access0
2 – Adoption3
3 – Proficiency5
4 – Ways of Working1
5 – Reorganizing0

Who is adopting

Funding: Own budget (9)

Notable cases

2023Elaph

Elaph — the first Arab online daily to deploy an AI news anchor. Its AI presenter 'Hala Al Wardi' is a digital human-like anchor that delivers the news, built through Advancia.ai, a joint venture between Elaph and media-and-digital-tech firm Virtual Minds; paired with customizable news services and AI-powered news-credibility checks for 'personalized, accessible and credible content.' Elaph is a London-based,…

AI Avatars / Synthetic Presenters2 – Adoption
Advancia.ai (Elaph + Virtual Minds JV) — AI digital-human news anchorSource →

2018Al Arabiya (MBC Group)

'Tamara' AI journalist — scans 6,000+ websites and 23,000 online articles and social media comments per millisecond; gathers, analyzes and publishes using proprietary 'GAP' (Gather, Analyze, Publish) methodology; detects potential fake news; reformats news in any format to match different outlet styles and journalist requirements

Content Production & Automation3 – Proficiency
Proprietary AI (NLP"; automated content processing)Source →

2024Asharq News (SRMG)

AI multilingual lookalike of anchor Hadil Eleyan presented live news in Russian, Spanish and Mandarin

AI Avatars / Synthetic Presenters4 – Ways of Working
AI synthetic presenter / deepfake avatar (unspecified)Source →

2025SRMG (Saudi Research and Media Group)

SRMG Media Solutions (SMS) — AI-driven audience segmentation and AdTech platform using first-party data and real-time analytics across SRMG's full portfolio (Asharq News, Arab News, Asharq Business with Bloomberg, Al Eqtisadiah, Sayidaty, Thmanyah); reaching 170M+ users

Advertising & Ad Operations3 – Proficiency
SRMG Media Solutions (SMS) — proprietary AI audience segmentation and AdTech platformSource →

2025Arab News (SRMG)

AI-powered multilingual translation platform: readers access Arab News content in 50 languages via adaptive ML for contextually accurate translation; launched at FIPP World Media Congress on the newspaper's 50th anniversary

Transcription & Translation3 – Proficiency
CAMB.AI — MARS text-to-audio + BOLI neural machine translation modelsSource →

2024Thmanyah

AI-powered podcast features: automatic music/background audio removal from any episode, transcript generation, keyword search within episodes, silent-moment trimming; offered as part of paid subscription tier on Radio Thmanyah app

Transcription & Translation2 – Adoption
Proprietary AI audio processing model (music separation, transcriptionSource →

Elsewhere in Middle East and North Africa

Algeria 2Bahrain 1Egypt 11Iran 4Israel 3Jordan 7Kuwait 6Lebanon 6Malta 3Morocco 3Oman 4Palestine 1
Data from J·Index, the Journalism AI Index — every case verified against a published source. See the methodological note for how cases are collected and coded. Updated 2026-07-23.