You no longer need a credit card to use world-class AI. Smart Communications has launched AI.Smart, a service that starts at ₱49 and bills straight to your Smart or TNT load or postpaid account.

For millions of Filipinos who study, freelance, and run online shops on a Smart connection, that removes the biggest barrier to premium AI tools.

"Millions of Filipinos already run their lives, their studies, and their online shopping and freelancing on a Smart connection," said Lloyd Manaloto, Smart's First Vice President and Head of Strategy and Corporate Brand. AI.Smart puts "a real AI assistant right beside it," he added, one that understands Filipino and respects your privacy.

What you get

Pick a credit pack and confirm with a one-time PIN sent by SMS:

  • Solo: ₱49 for 7 days
  • Flex: ₱99 for 14 days
  • Pro: ₱149 for 30 days
  • Max: ₱499 for 30 days

Pro and Max can be shared with a team or family.

With it, users can draft and summarize documents, build spreadsheets and presentations, generate images, analyze data, and work with their own files. It understands English, Filipino, and Taglish.

The entry-level package costs P49 for seven days, while a 30-day package costs P499 and can be shared by up to 10 users.

Under the hood

AI.Smart runs on a dedicated AWS environment for Smart and uses Amazon Bedrock to serve models from Amazon Nova, Anthropic's Claude, Google Gemini, OpenAI, and Thinking Machines. It assigns a model to each task. Smart and its partners say uploaded files stay private to the user's workspace, are not used to train AI models, are encrypted, and are not retained by model providers.

The startup angle

Tech startups Amihan and Avtica built the service on Bedrock. AWS Philippines Country Manager Precious Lim said they used it to bring frontier AI to "Filipino students, freelancers, and small-business owners," in their own language and at a local price.

Avtica CEO Winston Damarillo sees a bigger story. "The next billion AI users will not come from Silicon Valley," he said. They will come from cities like Manila, Jakarta, Lagos, and Dhaka, "on a prepaid phone." Avtica plans to take the model to Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and South Asia with telecom and cloud partners. "The Philippines is first. The model travels," Damarillo said.

Why it matters: Pricing AI locally and billing it through the account people already have could be a template for reaching emerging markets. Filipino-built tech may lead that push.

Source: Daily Tribune