The oil-rich Gulf state, keen to become a leader in the sector, previously unveiled Falcon in 2023 -- an open-source model developed by Abu Dhabi's Technology Innovation Institute.

"We're proud to finally bring Arabic to Falcon, and prouder still that the best-performing large language model in the Arab world was built in the UAE," said Faisal Al-Bannai, secretary general of Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Research Council, which oversees the project.

Falcon Arabic was trained on Arabic-language data covering various dialects across the region and matches "the performance of models up to 10 times its size", said a statement.

The council also announced Falcon H1, a new model designed to cut the computing power and technical expertise typically needed to run advanced systems.

During US President Donald Trump's visit to Abu Dhabi last week, the two countries signed an AI agreement that includes Emirati investment in American data centres.