Cairo's Awqaf ministry opens an AI production centre aiming for 3,000 videos a month

What the centre is for

The centre is a production house, not a research lab. Its job is to turn one religious or awareness message into many different finished pieces: films and short clips made with AI tools, visual processing and animation, in more than one language and format. Awqaf Minister Osama al-Azhari described it as a complete project for modernising preaching and media work, so that sound religious content can hold its own in the digital space rather than leaving the field to faster, less reliable material.

Madbouly put the same point in practical terms during the opening. He said the technology gives the ministry a chance to explain religious and scientific interpretations of everyday questions in a form people can actually use, and he pressed the minister to step up output sharply — producing a large volume of varied material that can reach every segment of Egyptian society, as a way of shielding the public from the negative pressures of some social-media content.

Five tracks, from classical Arabic to English

The centre works through five content tracks, according to Sheikh Mahmoud Taima, head of the ministry’s AI team. They are: content in classical Arabic; simplified Egyptian dialect; material for children and young people; content for youth and social-media platforms; and production in English. The idea, repeated across the coverage, is to move away from a single message for everybody and towards the same meaning delivered in the register, length and style each audience actually watches.

The team is small for now and meant to grow: about 40 young men and women specialising in AI, design and visual production work at the centre today, with a plan to reach about 150 specialists. Its pilot run produced 100 films on the wonders of creation; its stated current capacity is about 1,000 films a month, rising gradually towards the 3,000-a-month target. The minister had already outlined the centre’s aims at the Egypt Forum 2026, before today’s formal opening.

How a piece gets made — and checked

Production follows a fixed pipeline: an idea is chosen and a script written, the material is fed into AI tools, it goes to editing, and only then to linguistic and religious review before publication. Every item passes a specialist review covering its religious, historical, media and social aspects, so that speed does not come at the cost of accuracy — a safeguard the ministry stressed, given that AI-generated material can otherwise carry errors with confidence.

During his tour of the studios and production halls, Madbouly watched samples of what the centre is already making, including a series tackling ideas linked to sorcery and another on honouring one’s parents, and he looked at designs for the ‘Correct your concepts’ campaign, being prepared with AI tools for the ministry’s Facebook page, covering behaviour and ideas such as bullying and lying. He signed the centre’s visitors’ book at the end of the tour and praised the idea of using AI for content that serves religious discourse.

No public visiting programme, address, contact or opening hours for the centre have been published in the coverage checked here, and none is stated in this article, because none has been verified: this is a working ministry production facility, opened today, not a public attraction.