A young population, high levels of digital literacy, and governments’ laser-focused on GDP diversification through digital transformation – these are, some would say, the most important macroeconomic ingredients for the GCC’s success in the field of artificial intelligence.
“We see a growing need for AI-based solutions,” said one such proponent. Malik Alyousef is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Mozn, a Saudi-based AI tech company established in 2017 to bring the power of artificial intelligence to natural-language understanding and regulatory compliance, particularly in the anti-money-laundering (AML) and anti-fraud arenas. The company recently attended the inaugural DIFC FinTech Summit in Dubai to showcase its flagship FOCAL platform and discuss the state of play in regional AI.
“Given the increase in AI adoption as the result of awareness of ChatGPT and other recent AI phenomena, organizations will want to understand how they can leverage these technologies to reduce costs, improve operations, and increase revenues,” Alyousef added.
A 2018 report by PwC predicts the Middle East AI market will be worth $320 billion by 2030. The biggest absolute gains will be seen in Saudi Arabia, the study concludes, with more than $135 billion being added to 2030 GDP, while the largest relative gains – a 14% “impact” to 2030 GDP – will be felt in the UAE.
“All of these trends and our conversations with clients [show us] that AI will greatly impact how we work,” said Alyousef. “There’s a lot of talk about AI destroying some repetitive manual-labour jobs. But I see that as a potential to create new jobs that are primarily driven by AI.”
Mozn has long been an advocate of the “supplement, not supplant” argument for AI’s role in the modern workplace. Its clients include prominent public sector and private sector enterprises, where the company’s platforms, such as FOCAL, have helped deliver actionable intelligence in AML and anti-fraud investigations. From its Saudi base, Mozn has built a reputation across the Arab Gulf, and its leadership team views the UAE as a “gateway for our expansion”, according to Alyousef.
“We want to be closer to our clients in the region, so our GCC expansion plan start with having a stronger presence in the UAE market,” he said.
The bedrock of Mozn’s offerings is its FOCAL platform, described by Alyousef as “an innovative AI-powered reg-tech solution for the financial services market”. FOCAL exposes an application programming interface (API) to allow its clients to integrate AML and anti-fraud compliance capabilities into their core systems.
Alyousef highlighted the “configurability” and “scalability” of the platform as its standout features, adding that, “multiple use cases… in the reg-tech space [are covered],” including customer screening, customer risk assessment, transaction screening, transaction monitoring, and anti-fraud.
“We inject AI capabilities across the platform,” he explained. “[When] screening, we use our NLP [natural-language processing] capabilities to reduce false positives for Arabic name matching. In our fraud capabilities, we inject digital data and physical data to detect anomalies.”
The maturity of AI as a corporate go-to technology is perhaps best illustrated by a shift in the discussion from its potential to the need for responsible implementation given its inevitable use. Alyousef acknowledges that, amid the excitement about AI, there is understandable concern.
“People are worried… about its potential misbehaviour, and that could cause big problems,” he said. “If you have an AI-based chatbot that gives wrong answers about your services or offerings, you wouldn’t want that. So, I think there is a lot of work being done right now to put the right guardrails around AI. A lot of innovation is being done in this space.”
Guardrails in place, Mozn expects the rapid march of AI to continue across the region, capturing more and more use cases as the market grows. The potential for growth, Alyousef believes, is significant. In the next decade, he expects Mozn, through FOCAL, to continue to inspire the region’s compliance officers to streamline their workflows and reduce their complexity, all while spotting increasing amounts of criminal activity.
“Clients know they must digitise their financial services offerings, and make sure that their [digital estates] are safe with our anti-fraud and AML solutions,” he said.
As AI continues to ingratiate itself to a grateful regional business community, we should expect nothing less.
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