Smarty
Smarty is the free generative-AI chatbot of Italian schoolbook publisher Edizioni Atlas. Built for lower and upper secondary classrooms, it answers only within the subject and the adopted Atlas textbook, at a reading level tuned to the pupils' age.
What is Smarty?
Smarty is the generative-AI assistant published by Istituto Italiano Edizioni Atlas, the Italian schoolbook house that has been part of the Zanichelli group since 2016. It is aimed at the Scuola Secondaria, meaning both lower secondary (ages 11 to 14) and upper secondary education, and it exists as several separate chatbots, one per subject area. Five are published: Antologia, Arte, Geografia, Tecnologia and Informatica. In upper secondary the tool covers computing and literature anthology; in lower secondary it covers art and image, geography and technology.
What sets Smarty apart is not the model but the fence around it. Each chatbot is paired with a specific Atlas course, and its answers are deliberately confined to that subject and to the contents of that textbook. The publisher also states that responses are calibrated to the cognitive, cultural and emotional level of the developmental age of the class, so that a fourteen-year-old and a seventeen-year-old do not receive the same register. Atlas presents this narrowness as the product: a controlled environment in which a teacher can let a class experiment with generative AI without the drift, the copyright problems and the privacy exposure of a general-purpose chatbot.
Technically the assistant is a Chatbase chatbot embedded as an iframe in ordinary, publicly accessible pages of edatlas.it; the underlying large language model is named as Gemini. No account, no installation and no payment are required to open it.
The publisher frames the whole initiative against the Italian and European rulebook, citing Regulation (EU) 1689/2024, the AI Act, Italian Law 132/2025 on artificial intelligence and Ministerial Decree 166/2025, the guidelines for introducing AI into schools. The stated goal is AI literacy as much as study support: teachers are encouraged to use the chatbot on the interactive whiteboard, then discuss with the class what it got right and where it failed. Atlas is unusually direct about the limits, writing that Smarty in no way replaces the textbook and is not to be treated as a fully reliable source.
What it does
- Answer subject questions and clear up doubts strictly within the chapter and the adopted Atlas textbook
- Rephrase a concept or a passage of the book in simpler wording for a given class level
- Generate multiple-choice quizzes and oral-practice questions to check comprehension
- Produce lesson material of a set length, structured as bullet points, titled paragraphs or a concept map
- Differentiate the same content for reinforcement, extension or an individual pupil's needs
- Hold the conversation and translate in more than 95 languages for CLIL and Italian-as-a-second-language work
- Correct the grammar and spelling of a text supplied by the pupil and work on subject vocabulary
When to use Smarty / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Smarty is the right fit.
When to use Smarty
- Italian secondary-school teachers whose class has adopted an Atlas course in literature, art, geography, technology or computing
- Teachers preparing differentiated material: structured summaries, concept maps, texts of a set length, reinforcement or extension tasks
- Teachers building formative assessment, who need multiple-choice quizzes, open questions and essay prompts tied to the chapter being taught
- Support and special-needs teachers working with pupils who have specific learning difficulties, low vision or colour blindness
- Teachers of newly arrived and non-native pupils running CLIL or Italian-as-a-second-language work, who need the same content in another tongue
When not to use Smarty
- Teachers and pupils outside Italy: the answers are anchored to Italian curricula and to Atlas textbooks
- Primary-school staff, since the publisher scopes the tool explicitly to lower and upper secondary education
- Anyone teaching a subject Atlas has not covered with a coach, mathematics in particular, which is served by a separate non-AI web app
- Schools that have adopted another publisher's textbooks, because the whole point of the tool is fidelity to the Atlas course
- Developers or institutions wanting to embed the assistant elsewhere: there is no API, no mobile app and no published integration
How to use Smarty
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Open edatlas.it and go to the Smarty section, or straight to the service page for the assistant
- Pick the coach that matches the subject you teach: anthology, art, geography, technology or computing
- Start typing in the chatbot embedded in the page; no registration, login or payment is requested
- Ask for the material you need, naming the chapter, the class level and the length or structure you want
- For inclusion work, describe the pupil's needs in the prompt, as the publisher's worked examples show
- Ask for the same content in another language when working with non-native pupils or on a CLIL unit
- Ask for multiple-choice quizzes or oral-practice questions to turn the material into formative assessment
- Use the assistant on the interactive whiteboard with the whole class, for guessing games or quick quizzes
- Dictate by voice instead of typing, and have answers read aloud or shown in capitals where that helps
- Check the answers against the textbook before handing them on, as the publisher explicitly asks you to
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Free and open: no account, no licence and no payment stand between a teacher and the chatbot
- The closed scope is a real safeguard, since answers are bound to the subject and to the adopted textbook
- An explicit no-training commitment: the processor may not use the text typed in to train or improve AI
- Sober data handling, with no personal data stored by the chatbots, no profiling and no automated decisions
- The subprocessor and the underlying model are named in plain sight rather than buried or omitted
- Genuine, documented accessibility work for pupils with specific learning difficulties or visual impairment
- The publisher states the limits of the tool itself instead of overselling its reliability
Cons
- Very narrow coverage: five subject coaches, and their usefulness depends on having adopted an Atlas course
- Effectively unusable outside Italy, since content, curricula and interface are Italian only
- No API, no mobile application and no published third-party integration
- No pricing page and no commercial commitment: the publisher reserves the right to change or withdraw services at any time
- The privacy policy states that no data leaves the European Union, while the Smarty specification page describes text being sent to Chatbase Inc.; the site never reconciles the two
- No hosting country or region is declared for the data the assistant processes
- No Data Processing Agreement and no security certification are published
Pricing & Plans
There is a permanent free plan and no paid tier. Edizioni Atlas states that access to Smarty is free, and the site publishes no price, no quota and no usage limit for the assistant, nor any pricing page for it. Readers should be careful not to attribute other charges on the site to Smarty: Atlas ebooks are sold through the myZanichelli and bSmart platforms, and the educational licensing page covers permission to reproduce extracts of published works. Both concern separate products and neither sets a price for the assistant.
- the only plan
- no paid tier
- no quota and no usage limit published for the assistant
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Smarty handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR implementation is stated in concrete terms. The privacy policy is an Article 13 notice under Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Italian Legislative Decree 101/2018, last updated on 7 June 2025. The controller is named as Zanichelli editore S.p.A., single-member company, Via Irnerio 34, Bologna, VAT and tax code 04284651207, reachable at privacy@zanichelli.it; a Data Protection Officer is appointed under Articles 37-39 and reachable at privacy.rpd@zanichelli.it. Access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection, withdrawal of consent and complaint to the Garante are all listed. The policy states that no personal data collected through the site is transferred outside the European Union or to international organisations, and that no automated decision-making takes place. For the chatbot itself, the stated legal bases are consent and performance of the contract.
Who owns the data?
The terms keep ownership with the user. Under Proprieta dei contenuti, as between the user, Atlas and Chatbase, the user retains ownership rights over both the Input typed into the chatbot and the Output it returns; the two together form the "content", and the user is responsible for it. Atlas nevertheless reserves the right to use that content to provide, maintain, develop and improve its services, to comply with the law and to keep the service secure. Chatbase Inc., which receives the text through its API, is contractually barred from using it to improve or train artificial intelligence. The data controller is Zanichelli editore S.p.A., Via Irnerio 34, Bologna.
Reuse rights
Nothing in the published terms requires the user to ask permission before reusing what the chatbot produces: the user keeps ownership of the output and is free to take it into a lesson, a worksheet or a revision sheet. Two limits are stated. Output may not be used to build models that compete with Smarty, and it may not be used to make decisions with a legal or material effect on a person, such as decisions about credit, education, employment, housing, insurance, legal or medical matters. The publisher also warns that output may not be unique and that other users may receive similar answers, and that it may be incomplete, wrong or offensive, so it should be checked before being shared.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The site declares no hosting country and no hosting region for the data Smarty processes, so the picture has to be assembled from two statements that the publisher never reconciles. The privacy policy, in its section on transfers, states that Edizioni Atlas does not transfer personal data collected through edatlas.it and its embedded tools to countries outside the European Union or to international organisations. The Smarty specification page, by contrast, states that the text and requests entered into the chatbot are sent through an API to the servers of Chatbase Inc., the company operating the Gemini-based service. Both statements are first-party and neither is qualified by the other. Separately, the edatlas.it website itself resolves to an address in Lelystad, in the Netherlands, but that is the hosting of the publisher's showcase site and says nothing about where chatbot traffic is processed. A school with a jurisdictional requirement should ask the publisher to clarify in writing before deploying the tool.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Smarty.
- Outsourced thinking: the assistant writes summaries, questions and concept maps quickly enough that pupils, and teachers under time pressure, can stop doing the structuring work that the learning actually consists of
- Misplaced trust: the answers read fluently and stay on topic, which makes them feel more authoritative than the publisher's own warning that they may be inaccurate, incomplete or out of date
- The publisher states that no data leaves the European Union while also describing text being sent to Chatbase Inc.; the two statements are never reconciled and no hosting location is declared
- Pupils may type personal or health details into a school-branded chatbot despite the explicit ban, simply because the box invites conversation
- Ownership is shared in practice: the user keeps rights over input and output, but Atlas reserves the right to use that content to develop and improve its services
- Nothing commits the publisher to keeping the service free or alive; the terms allow services and content to be changed or withdrawn at any time, so lessons built around Smarty carry a dependency risk
- The tool's fidelity to one publisher's textbook is a pedagogical safeguard and a commercial lock-in at the same time; it is worth being aware of both
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
None worth the name. Smarty needs no installation, no account, no licence key and no configuration: the chatbot is embedded directly in the subject pages of edatlas.it, and a browser is enough to start typing. Classroom use on an interactive whiteboard requires nothing beyond opening the page. There is no API, no SDK and no integration to configure, which removes the setup burden and, equally, the possibility of embedding the assistant anywhere else.
Deployment
Supported languages
Behind Smarty
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Smarty cost?
Do I need an account to use it?
Which subjects does Smarty cover?
Which AI model is behind it?
Will my text be used to train the AI?
What data does Smarty keep about me?
Can pupils type sensitive information into it?
Does it help pupils with specific learning difficulties?
Is there an API or a mobile app?
Can I rely on the answers?
Should you pick Smarty?
Smarty is a deliberately small tool, and that is the most interesting thing about it. Rather than putting a general-purpose chatbot in front of teenagers, Edizioni Atlas has built five subject-bound assistants whose answers are fenced in by the syllabus and by the textbook the class already owns, and tuned to the age of the pupils reading them. For a teacher of anthology, art, geography, technology or computing working from an Atlas course, that fence is the value: lesson material, differentiated texts, concept maps and quizzes arrive already aligned with what the class is studying, and the accessibility work for pupils with specific learning difficulties or low vision is substantial rather than decorative.
The data posture is unusually restrained for an education product. No personal data is stored by the chatbots, there is no profiling and no automated decision-making, the subprocessor and the underlying model are named openly, and the processor is contractually barred from training on what pupils type. The publisher is also candid about the limits, writing itself that the assistant does not replace the textbook and should not be treated as a fully reliable source.
The reservations are equally clear. Coverage is narrow and the tool is worth most to schools that have already adopted Atlas books, which makes it effectively Italian-only. There is no API, no mobile app and no integration. Nothing commits the publisher to keeping a free service alive, and no Data Processing Agreement, security certification or hosting location is published. One contradiction is worth putting to the publisher directly: the privacy policy states that no data leaves the European Union, while the Smarty page describes text being sent to Chatbase Inc. A school weighing this tool should ask for that point in writing.
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