inDrive Says AI Will Guide, Not Replace, Decisions for Philippine Riders and Drivers

Ride-hailing platform inDrive wants artificial intelligence to help Filipino passengers and drivers make better choices rather than make the choices for them, chief product officer Sidd Mantri said at a media roundtable in Makati on October 16, Inquirer Technology reported. The company is exploring how AI can help with problems riders and drivers in the Philippines face every day, including traffic, passenger safety and driver earnings.

inDrive already uses AI for pricing, vehicle verification and customer support. For pricing, the platform analyses historical trends, current demand and available driver supply to help balance the market, in keeping with its peer-to-peer model. Mantri said AI now handles almost 67 percent of the vehicle images processed in driver operations, speeding up tasks such as switching from one vehicle to another, and that generative AI resolves around 40 percent of customer support tickets globally, leaving human agents the harder cases.

“We’re not taking the decision-making authority away from them,” Mantri said, describing a strategy of taking the best available technology and adapting it to hyper-local conditions. He said members of the product organisation, himself included, must complete at least one field immersion each quarter, watching how people use the service in traffic and on the street. At a recent driver wellness event in the Philippines, about 50 drivers joined discussions with the product team.

What it means in practice

The human-in-the-loop pitch mirrors what other Philippine adopters say as they move from pilots to production, a pattern seen in the AWS-commissioned study putting business AI adoption at 32 percent and in Jobstreet’s AI voice prescreening for hiring, where software filters and people decide.

For drivers, the most consequential use is pricing. Recommendations built on demand and supply data can help them judge whether a fare offer is worth taking, but they also shape what passengers come to see as reasonable. How clearly inDrive explains those recommendations will matter for trust on both sides of the market, especially as ride data is also pitched as a way to help passengers compare routes, travel times and costs.

Autonomous vehicles remain a distant prospect. Mantri estimated that adapting them to developing markets, where roads, trip distances and affordability differ, could take five to six years, and said inDrive wants drivers to become entrepreneurs rather than be displaced. What to watch: which AI features reach Filipino users first, and how pricing guidance is shown to drivers and riders.