In a bold move to strengthen its position as a leader in digital innovation, Italy’s telecom giant TIM is giving its customers a taste of next-gen AI—completely free. The operator has partnered with Perplexity, one of the most advanced generative AI platforms globally, to offer fixed and mobile consumers a full year of complimentary access to Perplexity Pro.

The AI assistant is designed to enhance everyday life, from answering questions in real time to creating content, analyzing documents, and more. This initiative marks TIM as the first telecom operator in Italy to roll out such an offer, aiming to make artificial intelligence accessible, useful, and deeply integrated into daily routines.

Unlimited AI Power: TIM Offers €20/month Perplexity Pro for Free

Perplexity Pro allows unlimited searches, interactive voice sessions, analysis and synthesis of documents, content creation, images, web pages, presentations, interactive data dashboards and automatic management of the most suitable AI templates for each type of request. Its responses arrive in seconds, always citing the sources.

Perplexity Pro chooses from the main large language models according to the customer’s request. In addition to Perplexity’s own model, it can also use the main established LLMs such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and R1 1776 (the US’ version of Deepseek R1).

TIM customers can access this AI service via the Perplexity platform, which is worth €20 a month – the entry-level subscription at Perplexity Pro. Whether the freebie is to help TIM attract and retain customers or convert them to paying customers once they embedded the use of Perplexity Pro into their daily lives remains to be seen – presumably on some kind of revenue share.

Bringing AI to Everyday Life

Either way, it will be interesting to watch how this unfolds and regardless, TIM claims this move cements its role in technological innovation, bringing AI within everyone’s reach and is another step towards the completion of its Customer Platform development strategy. The approach is through agreements with top-tier partners and open innovation, to make AI an integral part of everyday life

To activate the service, the operator’s consumer customers log into TIM Party – TIM’s loyalty programme – from the app or website and request a free code to use on the Perplexity platform.

“We are excited to collaborate with TIM to bring Perplexity Pro to users in Italy”, 

said Ryan Foutty, VP of business at Perplexity. “Accurate, trustworthy answers are essential to millions of decisions that Italians make every day, and TIM’s strengths as a technical pioneer make it a natural partner to provide valuable technology that improves daily life for all customers.”

Andrea Rossini, Chief Consumer, Small & Medium & Mobile Wholesale Market Officer at TIM, added,

“We’re proud to be the first operator in Italy to offer an advanced AI assistant like Perplexity Pro, which represents a concrete step toward a new digital relationship model. For us, innovation means simplifying and improving the everyday experience, with useful, reliable, and accessible solutions.”

Final thoughts

TIM’s integration of Perplexity Pro positions it at the forefront of a growing trend where telecoms bundle AI tools as part of their consumer offerings. While TIM is the first in Italy to offer a full year of access to a GenAI assistant, it joins a small but growing list of operators testing similar models. Deutsche Telekom recently launched its own AI assistant embedded in the T Phone, Hrvatski Telekom in Croatia adds Perplexity Pro service as well as Sunrise in Switzerland, and Telefónica is partnering with Microsoft to bring AI tools to its Movistar clients, though primarily in enterprise settings. Even Orange has started trials with AI-driven customer experiences via GenAI platforms.

What sets TIM apart is its direct-to-consumer approach, offering a premium AI tool as part of its loyalty program—not as an internal tool or enterprise solution, but as an everyday assistant. As telcos seek new revenue streams beyond connectivity, those who move early to embed trusted, user-facing AI experiences will likely lead the next phase of digital customer engagement.