Understanding UAE AI Governance Regulations: A Compliance Handbook

The UAE's Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 on Personal Data Protection establishes strict boundaries for data processing. AI systems, especially those using LLMs, must comply with rules regarding user consent, data masking, and purpose limitation.

Regulated sectors like banking and healthcare face additional compliance requirements from authorities like the Central Bank of the UAE and local health departments.

Firms must document data lineage and implement strict controls to ensure personally identifiable information (PII) is not exposed during model training or inference.

To comply with evolving regional standards, enterprises should set up a cross-functional AI Governance Board.

This board should oversee model validation, bias testing, explainability protocols, and MLOps security controls.

Having a documented AI risk policy is becoming a standard requirement for major enterprise tenders across Dubai and Abu Dhabi.