The UAE's Office of Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications has revealed that Google's Gemini has secured the top position in the inaugural "AI in the Ring" Index-the world's first benchmark assessing how well AI language models understand and reflect Emirati culture, traditions, dialects, and national values.
The ranking follows an extensive evaluation in which more than 400 culturally focused questions were posed across seven dimensions, generating 5,200 responses from 11 leading AI models. A panel of Emirati cultural experts reviewed the outputs, scoring each model on cultural accuracy, sensitivity, and depth of understanding. Gemini emerged as the best-performing system.
Trailing closely behind Gemini 2.5 Pro, the top performers list also included ChatGPT OpenAI GPT-4o, ChatGPT OpenAI o1, Cohere, and Grok, marking them as the five models most effective at demonstrating cultural awareness in a UAE-specific context.
