Artificial Intelligence (AI) opens new horizons for exploring, understanding and documenting heritage, enriching and renewing the human experience through the combination of technology and human creativity. At Qatar Foundation (QF), experts are spearheading projects that integrate technical innovation with cultural and historical heritage.
These initiatives employ advanced technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing to develop tools and software that enable effective and comprehensive heritage monitoring and documentation. This contributes to the preservation and communication of heritage for future generations.
Dr Ibrahim Muhammad Zain, Professor of Islamic Studies and Comparative Religion at QF member Hamad bin Khalifa University’s (HBKU) College of Islamic Studies, emphasises AI’s pivotal role in preserving heritage and presenting it systematically. He views AI as a means to make heritage an active part of daily life and enhance its educational and cultural value.
“Through AI, we can preserve heritage and history in a way that has never happened before,” he says. “Today, we have moved to a more complex level, which is AI, providing tremendous potential for preserving heritage in all its forms, whether written, material, or otherwise.”
One project epitomising this vision is the Digital Sirah Project.
Commencing in 2018 through a collaboration between Qatar National Library (QNL) and Aga Khan University, this project reflects the aspiration of Shaikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation, for QF to undertake initiatives serving the Sirah of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
Currently curated by QNL and CIS, the project aims to create the world’s most comprehensive digital portal on the Prophet (PBUH), making his life accessible and engaging to the public, especially youth, through digital mediums and AI elements.
“The Digital Sirah Project aims to focus on the biography of the Prophet Muhammad as a good example for the general public, both Muslims and non-Muslims, and to help them comply with prophetic values and morals in their daily lives and practices,” says Dr Zain. He underscores the necessity of a “clear and specific” vision when using AI in documenting heritage and history, explaining that effective heritage preservation requires a clear strategy to ensure its educational value and its expression of Arab and Islamic civilisation. At HBKU’s Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), experts are using AI techniques to preserve Arab linguistic and cultural heritage, as well as to teach and advance the understanding of the Arabic language and local dialects.
Dr Ahmed Ali, a researcher in the centre’s Arabic Language Technologies Department, highlights the unique challenges of the Arabic language, including its diverse dialects and the lack of a standard orthography.
“Using AI, we can recognise different Arabic dialects and distinguish between them,” he says. This capability allows AI to convert spoken texts into written ones and differentiate between speakers from various Arab countries.
AI’s ability to understand and interact with multiple Arabic dialects — such as Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf, and Maghrebi — enhances the user experience in various applications, from cars to home appliances and mobile phones. “This ensures a smooth interactive experience in Arabic between the user and the device,” Dr Ali explains.
The Fanar project, a strategic collaboration between the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MoTCIT) and HBKU’s QCRI, significantly advances Arabic language AI models.
Utilising a dataset of over 400 billion words of high-quality Arabic text, Fanar produces accurate, high-quality texts that enhance the representation of Arabic in the AI field globally.
Dr Mohamed Eltabakh, Principal Scientist, QCRI, explains that data is one of the most important factors affecting large language models. As for the Arabic language, the data available on the Internet is very small compared to the English language, amounting to at most 1 percent. This means that the large language models currently deal with Arabic as a marginal language.
He says: “At Fanar, we seek to make the Arabic language an authentic first-class citizen language, and we are working on collecting a large amount of high-quality Arabic data so that it carries the cultural and Islamic heritage and the prevailing values in our society.”
Dr Eltabakh also points out that Fanar is a generative AI application, which is taught a large set of data that enables it not only to retrieve old data but also to create new texts. “There is no doubt that Fanar will have a role in promoting innovation in the field of the Arabic language and AI, and in multiple fields, including education, arts, media, and even scientific research,” he concludes.
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