As of 2026-10-07, 8 official documents govern AI use by lawyers, judges or litigants in the Gulf states. 4 require disclosure or certification of AI use, 4 impose an explicit verification duty, and 0 prohibit some use outright. The incident tracker records 1 incident in this jurisdiction.
A practice direction and accompanying practice guidance issued by the Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre on 6 January 2026 on the use of AI in proceedings before the Qatar Financial Centre courts. Parties and representatives must verify AI-assisted content, may be required to disclose AI use, and remain responsible for fabricated or inaccurate material.
Practice direction / note · Verification duty · Disclosure
Bahrain's whole-of-government AI policy, issued by the Information and eGovernment Authority on 20 May 2025. It applies to all government entities and sets four pillars: legal compliance, adoption and use, awareness and education, and cooperation. It contains no judiciary-, court- or legal-services-specific provision.
A non-binding national charter published on 30 July 2024 setting twelve ethical principles for developing and using AI in the UAE, including safety, bias mitigation, data privacy, transparency, human oversight, governance and accountability, and compliance with local law and international treaties. It is the UAE's principal horizontal AI instrument in the absence of an AI statute.
Non-binding SDAIA guidance for Saudi government entities and employees on adopting and overseeing generative AI. It sets principles, risk classifications, data-handling rules and role definitions with a compliance checklist aligned to the Personal Data Protection Law, cybersecurity rules and the AI Ethics Principles. It reaches the Ministry of Justice and the courts as government bodies.
Non-binding SDAIA guidance for individuals, organisations and developers using generative AI in Saudi Arabia. It identifies key harms — misinformation, deepfakes, privacy intrusion, biased output and cybersecurity risk — and recommends disclosure of synthetic content, provenance metadata, human-in-the-loop controls and data governance. It is not addressed to legal practice.
Guidance issued by the DIFC Courts on 21 December 2023 for parties and practitioners using large language models and generative AI in proceedings. It sets out four principles — transparency, accuracy and reliability, professional and legal obligations, and avoiding over-reliance — and requires parties to declare AI-generated content at the earliest possible opportunity.
Regulation 10 of the DIFC Data Protection Regulations, in force 1 September 2023, is the first instrument in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia to govern personal data processed through autonomous and semi-autonomous systems, including generative AI. It sets behavioural boundaries for entities that deploy or operate such systems rather than regulating algorithms directly.
SDAIA's national AI ethics framework, first issued in September 2023, sets non-binding principles for AI across all Saudi sectors and applies a risk-based classification to AI systems. It is the Kingdom's principal horizontal AI instrument; Saudi Arabia has no AI statute. Nothing in it addresses legal practice or courts specifically.
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United Arab Emirates 
Bahrain 
Kuwait 
Qatar 
Saudi Arabia