Local AI: Playing Smart with Latam's Next Revolution
Latin America’s 200 million deskless workers need answers, not prompts — that is Luzia’s market.
If you're reading this, you already know about AI—or at least, I've spent the last three years making sure you do. You're familiar with LLMs, ASO in the age of AI (GEO), H100s, and AGI. We live inside a bit of an AI bubble, and it's easy to forget how niche that bubble really is.
Outside our circle, most people aren’t chatting whether openAI or Google will rule the world. In fact, about 80% of the global workforce doesn’t sit behind a desk—they’re driving buses, serving customers, working construction sites, or farming fields. For them, AI isn't about chatbots or multimodal embeddings—it's about whether technology can truly make their daily tasks simpler, quicker, or less frustrating.
The gap between people like us—early adopters—and everyone else isn't just about design. It's a huge opportunity to create tech that genuinely helps people in their everyday lives, and it's also the reason we started Luzia: to help everyone avoid falling behind.
This essay makes the case for what I call Local AI—AI built around cultural, linguistic, skill-level, and regulatory realities unique to each market.
Give me electricity, I will put a light bulb
AI is a general-purpose technology—a fundamental shift that, piece by piece, will quietly reshape our lives until we barely notice it's there. AI is not the first, and as such there are powerful lessons from previous ones. Let’s look to electricity:
In the early 1900s, factories installed electric lights and motors but stuck with their old steam-powered workflows. It helped, but productivity stayed flat. Only when Henry Ford rebuilt his entire factory around a moving assembly line did electricity transform the world. Suddenly, assembling a Model T dropped from over 12 hours to just 93 minutes, slashing costs and creating an entirely new economy. Electricity wasn't about the bulb—it was about reorganizing everything around it.
AI today is in the "light bulb" phase: it can write emails, tutor kids, or summarize meetings, which is extremely useful, but the reality is that for most people, it's still just a chatbot. Chatbots are helpful, but they're nowhere close to AI’s true potential.
Why? Because most AI experiences aren't instantly useful or intuitive enough to justify changing habits. Trust alone doesn't drive adoption; immediate, frictionless value does. Just look at iFood or Pix: adoption exploded because they delivered instant, obvious benefits. Chatbots today demand too much thinking, guessing, and effort from users. They require users to update their mental models of what AI is, from the useless Siri to the useful Luzia. Mass adoption won't come until AI becomes effortless from the very first interaction, whatever that interaction or use case may be.
We started Luzia with a chatbot because it was easy to integrate quickly into people's lives through platforms like WhatsApp, and f** yeah it worked - we reached millions within the first months. But we quickly realized that people don’t want to learn how to talk to an AI—they want immediate solutions. A quick, simple real product example: Luzia users can solve math problems through chat or a dedicated tool—and three times as many prefer the tool. Similarly, ten times more users create summaries with the summary tool rather than the main chat, and five times more have educational conversations with Luzia Teacher rather than Luzia. Why? Because tools and custom characters require no effort, no guesswork—just results.
This shift to practical, intuitive, "in-your-face" AI isn't just better design—it's essential for mass adoption. With 80% of workers worldwide not at desks but driving trucks, farming, or caring for patients, AI must blend seamlessly into everyday tasks. This is Local AI: practical, immediate, and built around real-world workflows, empowering everyone—not just tech-savvy users—to benefit from AI's true potential.
AI for Everyone, Effortlessly
Our early success with WhatsApp taught us two things: people quickly adopt easy solutions; people prefer human connection with their assistant, even when they are virtual. The next challenge was clear: owning the user experience entirely to deliver simpler, even more intuitive and connected products.
We’ve learned that truly great AI products don’t need explanations—they just work. Guided by that insight, we’re moving beyond the chat box to one-tap tools woven into everyday Latin-American routines: closing an iFood or Rappi hyper customized orders (we know the user even before they are craving some food), getting on-budget product suggestions the moment you open the app, flipping forty pages of lecture notes into a two-minute summary, or surfacing the cheapest empanada stand within five blocks. From uni to corner tienda, each touchpoint is local, instant, and effortless—AI exactly where you need it, the moment you need it.
Localization is subtle—just enough to feel relevant, never distracting or forced. But our true differentiator is distribution. We grow organically within tight networks by consistently delivering high-quality, frictionless experiences, and we leverage strategic local partnerships to integrate seamlessly into daily routines, appearing exactly when users need us. Our on-the-ground presence is deliberate and authentic—Luzia is fundamentally a LATAM company. This means deep local insights, genuine trust, and direct user connection.
Luzia isn't about complex interactions; it’s about effortless, immediate results, empowering every user, everywhere.
The moment is now
AI is the electricity of our era. But just as electricity only changed the world when people redesigned factories around it, AI will only transform lives when we redesign workflows and respect local contexts. Latin America offers fertile ground: adoption is growing and trust is high, yet no one has defined what “AI” feels like for ordinary people.
Luzia will define what AI actually feels like for everyday Latin Americans. By combining deep localization, native integrations, AI-first workflows, and distribution embedded in the apps people already trust, we can create that “of-course” moment when even your parents see AI as a utility, not a gimmick. We’re not stringing light bulbs in a steam-era factory; we’re laying the assembly line for the AI age. The ingredients are in place—millions of users, committed capital, and on-the-ground partners—so the only thing left is execution.
I launched Luzia to ensure people like my mom—literally our first user—can directly benefit from this revolution. AI is, at the risk of repetition, intelligence as a service: an opportunity for everyone to better understand the world around them. With understanding comes empowerment. That's our DNA at Luzia—giving people the knowledge and skills to advocate for themselves. To deliver on that promise, we must stay close to people's daily lives, deeply understand their needs, and ensure this generation's electricity adapts seamlessly to the way they actually live.
The "local AI" concept is so powerful.... Most of the Ai will probably end up being "local" and "tropicalized.". Probably that has been the secret sauce of Luzia so far, and that´s why yuo mangaged to help so many people. Thanks for sharing Alvaro!