Is Arab media entering its golden age?

Some questions arrive with an answer. Others follow you for a while. One of them followed me through the corridors of the Arab Media Summit in Dubai. In one room, artificial intelligence was rewriting the future of media. In another, the conversation was about content, platforms and audiences. Between them moved hundreds of young people — phones in their hands, ideas in their heads — trying to find their place in an industry changing faster than its job titles.

And somewhere between one session and the next, I found myself wondering: Is Arab media entering its golden age? The question stayed with me when I stepped outside and looked at my phone. Google. Meta. TikTok. Netflix.

Four names. Four different businesses, we are told. Yet all four wanted something from me. A minute. A click. A little curiosity. My attention.

Suddenly, the economics of modern media seemed wonderfully simple: everyone was competing for a small piece of my day.

And those small pieces are worth a fortune.

Global advertising passed the US$1 trillion mark in 2025. PwC expects it to reach US$1.4 trillion by 2030, while the wider entertainment and media industry moves towards US$4.2 trillion.

There are trillions hiding behind our scrolling fingers.

Then another number appeared in Dubai: US$520 million. That is how much media companies in the Middle East and North Africa are expected to spend on AI in 2026, according to a report by the Dubai Press Club and Deloitte.

Numbers are usually accused of being boring.

Sometimes, however, they whisper where the future is going.

And these numbers made me wonder whether I had seen this story before.

Fifteen years ago, small digital companies in America were becoming giants. Advertising was leaving paper for screens. New professions appeared with names our parents would have struggled to understand.

Then the future arrived. But history, when it returns, rarely wears the same clothes. This time, the tools are in everyone’s hands.

They are no longer locked inside studios in New York, London or Silicon Valley. A young person sitting in Muscat, Riyadh, Dubai or Cairo now carries in one hand what once required cameras, editors, designers, translators and a distribution network.

That changes more than media.

It changes who gets to enter the room.

And perhaps this is where the Arab story becomes interesting.

The region has capital, technology, young audiences — and something no algorithm can manufacture for us: stories that have not yet travelled.

But abundance has a cruel little joke.

The easier it becomes to speak, the harder it becomes to be heard.

AI will make millions of images, videos and words cheaper and faster to produce. Content will become abundant. Meaning will not. Trust will not. A story worth remembering will not. Perhaps that is the paradox at the heart of the coming media economy: the more machines can create, the more valuable the unmistakably human may become.

So, is Arab media entering its golden age? Perhaps we are only in its opening chapters.

Platforms will change. Algorithms will change. AI will become smarter.

But the story will always be searching for a good storyteller.