AI features - subscription service

The AI features in the AtoM-AHG platform - Named Entity Recognition (NER), handwriting text recognition (HTR), OCR, machine translation, summarisation, AI description suggestions, and AI condition assessment - are an optional paid subscription. They are not part of the base platform and are not included in the standard licence.

What is and is not included

The base platform - cataloguing and description, digital objects, access and rights, the GLAM modules, search, IIIF, reporting, and everything else - is fully functional with no AI subscription.

The AI features ship inside the AHG plugins but are dormant by default. The platform is an AI client: it never hosts an AI model. Every AI operation is a call to the AHG AI gateway, a hosted service operated by The Archive and Heritage Group. Without an active subscription there is no gateway credential, so the AI features stay switched off - the AI menu items simply return nothing.

This keeps AI strictly optional. An institution that does not want AI, or that runs fully air-gapped, does not subscribe, and nothing in the base platform depends on it.

What the subscription covers

An AI subscription provides authenticated access to the AHG AI gateway, which backs:

• Named Entity Recognition (NER) - person / place / organisation extraction
• Handwriting Text Recognition (HTR) and OCR
• Machine translation, including the South African-language models
• Summarisation and AI description suggestions
• AI condition assessment
• AI inference-provenance recording and signing

How to subscribe

1. Email The Archive and Heritage Group at johan@theahg.co.za to request an AI subscription. State your institution and which AI features you intend to use.
2. AHG responds with the subscription terms. Pricing is quoted on enquiry - it depends on usage volume and the feature set, so there is no fixed price list.
3. On acceptance, AHG issues an AI gateway API key for your institution.

Activating AI once subscribed

Your system operator enters the gateway credentials in the AI Services settings of the AHG admin area:

• Processing mode - set to the mode AHG advises (cloud or hybrid).
• API URL - the AHG AI gateway endpoint AHG provides.
• API key - the ahg_live_... key issued for your institution.

Once saved, the AI menu items become live. Each AI feature also has its own enable toggle in AI Services settings, so an operator can subscribe and then roll features out gradually.

Changing or ending a subscription

To change the feature scope or end a subscription, email johan@theahg.co.za. When a subscription lapses the gateway credential stops authenticating: the AI features return to dormant and the base platform continues unaffected.

See also

• AI Tools - using the AI features day to day, once subscribed.
• AI Governance - operator visibility into AI models and usage.