UAE’s GEMS Education to roll out AI avatars of teachers across its schools
Digital twins of teachers to provide UAE students with after-school learning access
Dubai: GEMS Education is preparing to introduce AI-powered digital twins of its teachers, giving students access to personalised support and subject expertise well beyond the school day.
The initiative will see the UAE’s largest private school education group create digital personas built on its own teachers' subject-matter knowledge, allowing students to tap into approved learning content and teacher-informed guidance outside school hours, and in multiple languages.
These digital personas are AI avatars of teachers that can be personalised to meet the individual learning needs of students.
“The initiative is designed to extend the reach and impact of GEMS’ teachers, not replace them,” the group said.
How it will work
The first phase will be based at GEMS School of Research & Innovation (SRI), where the GEMS Global Education AI Hub and the GEMS Intelligence 360 platform will act as a testing ground. Here, teachers, students and partner organisations will co-design, trial and evaluate the AI agents and digital personas before any wider rollout.
Early projects will include digitalising instructors, building gamified learning tools, using AI to assist with content creation, and running classroom simulations.
Built-in guardrails and safety protocols are meant to keep humans in control throughout, with staff able to step in wherever necessary.
Reach and rollout
The programme is intended to scale across GEMS' network of schools in the Middle East and beyond, with a working solution targeted for release before the end of 2026.
That scale marks a shift from earlier AI-in-education efforts in the region, which have generally stayed confined to single schools or departments.
The announcement follows a broader push across the region to formalise AI’s role in education. Earlier this month, the UAE Cabinet approved measures to establish an AI curriculum across the country’s education sector, with a goal of training 22,000 educators to use AI in teaching, assessment, curriculum analysis, and lesson planning.
Partnership behind it
The initiative is being developed under a new strategic partnership between GEMS Education and Napster, an AI company focused on expanding access to expertise through embodied, multimodal agents.
Napster is contributing design, development and product management resources, drawing on its existing Napster Learn system, which already gives learners 24/7 access to course resources and mentorship.
Together, the two organisations plan to explore how AI can safely support core educational practices, including guided practice, formative feedback, communication skills, goal setting, and professional development for teachers themselves.
Usage and engagement will be tracked to assess how effective the tools are in improving learning outcomes.
‘Building a responsible model’
"AI should strengthen the human relationships at the heart of education, not diminish them," said Jay Varkey, deputy chief executive of GEMS Education.
"By combining our educational expertise and reach with Napster's agent and digital personas capabilities, we aim to build a responsible model that supports the UAE's ambition and can help set a positive global benchmark for K-12 education."
John Acunto, chief executive of Napster, said the partnership was a chance to "build responsible infrastructure to enable student success", adding that the company's broader goal of democratising access to expertise made the classroom a natural starting point.
Baz Nijjar, senior vice president for innovation, AI and futurism, and managing director of Intelligence 360 at GEMS Education, said the SRI and the GEMS Global Education AI Hub would allow the teams to "co-design and evaluate these capabilities with teachers and students, with safeguarding, age-appropriateness, and human oversight built in from the outset."
Samuel Huber, chief executive for MENA at Napster, said school systems across the Gulf were working to turn national AI ambitions into practical classroom strategy.
He pointed out that GEMS was "expanding it to an entire network of schools at a time when AI education is moving quickly," with plans to extend the model to more school systems across the region.
