Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has announced that agentic artificial intelligence has slashed the time needed to activate electricity and water supply for residents from around eight minutes to just two. The utility said the number of details customers must enter has dropped from ten to three, while the process itself now takes three steps instead of nine.
DEWA's managing director and CEO, Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, said the authority is among the first government entities in the UAE to deploy agentic AI at this scale, describing it as a step toward DEWA's ambition of becoming the world's first "AI-native" utility.
The change affects roughly 210,000 activation transactions a year, according to DEWA. The authority said 16 of its 21 core services, or 76 per cent, have already been redesigned using agentic AI. Payment reconciliation, for instance, previously took close to four hours and now takes about 12 minutes — a reduction of nearly 95 per cent. Technical notifications are now handled autonomously around the clock, without staff intervention.
DEWA began investing in artificial intelligence in 2017, and the latest upgrade is part of a broader push to fully digitise utility services in Dubai. For new residents and tenants moving into properties across the emirate, the shift means significantly shorter waiting times to get water and electricity connected, and a simpler process overall when dealing with one of the UAE's largest public utilities.