Smart Communications Inc. subscribers can now use premium artificial intelligence (AI) tools for as little as P49 a week, paid through their mobile accounts instead of a credit card, after Smart Communications Inc. launched AI.Smart with Avtica.ai and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
AI.Smart, powered by Avtica, is an AI workspace that runs on AWS and draws on multiple AI models through Amazon Bedrock. Subscribers can ask questions about their own files and get cited answers, draft and summarize documents, build spreadsheets, create presentations and images, and analyze data in English, Filipino, or Taglish.
Lloyd Manaloto, FVP and head of Strategy and Corporate Brand at Smart, said in a press briefing that the company saw a gap between subscribers who pay for premium AI and those who rely on free versions.
‘A few days before that, we were actually looking at some stats, and we kind of noticed there were already millions of AI users in our network. But when we asked, most of them were using the free model. In other words, they’re not maximizing,’ Manaloto said. ‘We realized there is now a gap between those who can pay for premium services and those who just use free.’
Smart is packaging the service the way it has sold prepaid load for years, in small, time-bound bundles.
Winston Damarillo, CEO of Avtica.ai, said the product was built by Filipinos for Filipinos, with AWS as a key component.
‘We’re so blessed and happy that we’re partnering with Amazon as the key ingredient and component for what provides the intelligence for AI.Smart.’
He said the launch was ‘probably one of the fastest’ done at Smart and PLDT, and that free and low-cost access is only the first step.
‘We want to show you what we can do by ourselves. We no longer need foreign providers. We can do this ourselves,’ he said.
Avtica plans to take the same model, which combines a national mobile operator, a local cloud region, frontier models through Amazon Bedrock, and a localized workspace, to markets in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and South Asia, with the Philippines as its proving ground.