The new Affinity is aimed directly at the visual arts, products, and services sector professionals who are the Canva main audience. The AI tools are now almost mandatory in that sector, making the idea of a free non-AI “starter kit” with rental AI add-ons a sensible business strategy. Photographers are a secondary (if that) audience.
If you browse Canva’s web pages you will find they have many other tools/apps besides Affinity. I can see their strategy of giving away Affinity to gain market share then charge a rental for the AI tools for those (professionals) who need it.
Casual users like myself and many others can benefit from a very powerful set of apps.
Unfortunately earlier this year I forked out dollars for the suite of Affinity apps which are now updated and free 
I am not angry as I think they were a very worthwhile investment for what I use them for.
I do not recall seeing that during the download & installation of Affinity?
As far as I am aware unless, within Affinity, you sign up/subscribe to Canva AI Affinity is is not ‘connected’ to Canva
Yes, you can download the ML models for Object Selection the same as was available in Affinity Photo v2.6 but that is all handled locally on the PC or Mac and not Cloud or subscription based.
When I look on the Affinity Studio website I cannot actually see a Login button ???
Let this spectacular consolidation inspire DxO to finally unify its constellation of apps into 1 single full Monty PhotoLab app to replace the current scattered cluster of interoperable apps and plug-ins (the 7 separate tools of Nik Collection are especially frustrating). To preserve choice (and avoid price hike), they could offer several versions or tiers, and sell plugins for non-DxO apps separately.
Yes, if DxO, want to sell FP, VP and even PR plugins to users of LR, PS or other why not.
But whether this is also the case for PL users, I don’t understand. PL must be a single complete software.
Trouble is… I don’t want FilmPack!
Making PL a complete software by including FilmPack would inevitably mean it costs more for every upgrade.
That said I’m already forced to get FilmPack to get hold of core functionality like contrast controls and Luma masking.
It’s a silly situation yet all too obvious what DxO are playing at there. Milk customers as much as possible.