RIYADH: Saudia, Saudi Arabia’s national carrier, is aiming to integrate voice recognition technology and augmented reality to its services, the company announced during the second edition of the Global AI Summit held in Riyadh. Saudia has signed an agreement, aimed at boosting artificial intelligence in the flight sector, with the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority and the Saudi Company for Artificial Intelligence. Speaking to Arab News on the sidelines of the summit, Dr. Khaled Alhazmi, vice president of IT support and operations at Saudia, said that the agreement is the first step in introducing AI products to the airline’s services. Alhazmi explained that the company is currently exploring voice recognition technology through one of SDAIA’s products, an app called SauTech. “It is an amazing app; it currently gives accurate results for the recognition of the dialects of the Arabic language. And right now, we are trying to explore opportunities and use cases, to start implementing it in our services,” he said. The company is also planning to adopt Internet of Things technology as well as augmented reality to ensure that they are first movers to implement AI into their services. “Our strategic direction is to build an ecosystem of partners who would enable us to digitize our services to our customers. We are aiming to deliver a first-class experience to our customers,” he added. Alhazmi believes that the digitalization factor currently in use at the airline such as downloading tickets to personal devices can be greatly expanded on, and that there are huge opportunities to integrate technology into the sector. “We are digitizing everything under a program, which is adapting the digital first. Right now we believe that we need to put in use all the data science, all the technologies nowadays, and put them into the hands of the customer,” he said. The company wants to improve its self-service options by providing a personalized platform that will enable users to customize their journey according to their needs. “That’s actually the main goal because we understand right now that we have a new generation of people who are more interested in technology, they are using technology every day,” he added. Saudia has also recently partnered with agritech company Red Sea Farms to provide sustainable and high-quality meals for its customers. “We can see that the adoption of technology in Saudi Arabia in general is getting more mature than other countries,” Alhazmi concluded.