Dubai's AI-powered border systems cleared 9,464,057 travelers between January and June 2026, according to data from the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA). The vast majority — 9,024,736 — used the older Smart Gates, but 439,321 people passed through the new document-free lane called 'Travel Without Borders' or 'Red Carpet' at Terminal 3.
How the document-free lane works
The lane, opened in 2025 and available only at Terminal 3, lets up to 10 people walk through together without showing a passport. Travelers first link their passport to a biometric photo at a counter. After that, they simply walk through. If the system flags something suspicious, an officer steps in for a manual check. GDRFA says the average processing time dropped from 12.5 seconds to 3.4 seconds — a 73% reduction, though the agency called it a 60% cut. Earlier reports on the same lane cited times between 6 and 14 seconds per traveler.
A decade of e-gate upgrades
Dubai first installed airport e-gates in 2002. A Smart Tunnel followed in 2018, and it got an upgrade in 2021. The document-free lane is the latest step. Routine passport checks now need fewer officers, and the work shifts toward manual checks and camera maintenance.
Accuracy questions remain unanswered
GDRFA has not published error rates for its own system. A December 2019 test by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of 189 face algorithms found that false positive rates varied by demographic group. The highest rates were for West African, East African, and East Asian faces, and the lowest for Eastern Europeans. Women were falsely matched 2 to 5 times more often than men. The UAE's Personal Data Protection Law took effect on January 2, 2022, but its implementing regulations are still unpublished. On June 14, 2026, the UAE created a Federal Authority for Artificial Intelligence and Data, absorbing the AI Office, the Emirates Data Office, and the telecom regulator's digital government arm. Whether that new authority will require GDRFA to release accuracy data is unclear.
