Rural and regional Australians experience high levels of psychological distress due to increased exposure to disasters, economic hardship, and service shortages, yet face major barriers to accessing timely, evidence based mental health care. Digital mental health interventions offer a promising solution, providing accessible, flexible, and stigma reducing support. The Skills fOr Life Adjustment and Resilience (SOLAR) intervention is designed to prevent the development of mental health disorders. SOLAR is a brief trauma informed skills based intervention, that has shown strong evidence for reducing posttraumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety symptoms in previous randomised controlled trials. Building on this foundation, two community informed versions of the SOLAR app have been created for regional users: SOLAR R, and SOLAR R+, which integrates generative AI to enhance personalisation and engagement. Little is known about the added value of AI within digital mental health interventions. The two versions of the SOLAR-R app are currently being tested in a national randomized controlled trial, involving rural and regional Australians. The aim of this presentation is to describe the SOLAR intervention, the human-centred process that was used to create the SOLAR-R apps, and to describe the SOLAR-R apps. Both conditions deliver eight self-paced modules via smartphone. SOLAR-R+ integrates an AI-driven digital assistant into app content to support goal setting and problem-solving, provide positive reinforcement, personalisation, and progress feedback. A brief update of the progress of the randomised controlled trial testing the efficacy of the SOLAR-R apps will be presented. This randomized controlled trial will be among the first to evaluate an AI enhanced, co designed digital mental health intervention tailored for rural and regional Australians.