Digital twins of teachers to give UAE students access to after-school learning.
Dubai: GEMS Education is preparing to introduce AI-powered digital twins of its teachers, giving students access to personalised learning support and subject expertise beyond the school day.
The initiative will see the UAE’s largest private school education group create digital personas based on its teachers’ subject knowledge. Students will be able to access approved learning content and teacher-informed guidance outside school hours and in multiple languages.
The digital personas are AI-powered avatars of teachers that can be personalised to meet individual students’ learning needs.
“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 GEMS Intelligence 360 platform will serve as a testing ground. 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 creating digital versions of teachers, developing gamified learning tools, using AI to support content creation and running classroom simulations.
Built-in guardrails and safety protocols are designed to keep humans in control throughout the process, with staff able to intervene whenever 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 by the end of 2026.
The planned scale marks a shift from earlier AI-in-education initiatives in the region, which have generally been limited to individual schools or departments.
The announcement follows a broader push across the region to formalise the role of AI 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 through 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 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 teachers’ professional development.
Usage and engagement will be tracked to assess how effectively the tools support 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 an opportunity to “build responsible infrastructure to enable student success”. He added 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 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 strategies.
He said 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.
