The global version of ChatGPT would remain available in the country but would be adapted to comply with local laws. Users would be notified when content is restricted due to national regulations. To keep costs down, OpenAI plans to rely on fine-tuning rather than full retraining of the model.

G42 is led by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother of the UAE president, national security adviser, and head of the country’s largest sovereign wealth fund. G42 and OpenAI have been partners since October 2023.

The need for such localization highlights a broader point: AI models are also cultural artifacts. Their outputs shape narratives across many layers of society, and even small changes in cultural framing can have long-lasting effects. This is why countries such as China—and increasingly the United States—seek to control the outputs of their AI models, both to influence domestic discourse and to project their perspectives abroad.