Thailand Gives Away 5 Million Free Premium ChatGPT and Claude Accounts

Thailand has become one of the first countries in the world to buy its citizens access to the best commercial artificial intelligence models instead of building its own. On September 1, the government platform AiPASS launched the TH-AI Passport program, under which 5 million Thais will get free, year-long access to premium versions of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and dozens of other models.

How AiPASS Works

The program eliminates the need to create separate accounts and pay individually for each AI service. Users log in once through the AiPASS app, verifying their identity via the government's Thang Rath or ThaID apps, and gain access to the entire package of models in one place. The requirements are Thai citizenship, a minimum age of 15, and disabling private browsing mode, meant to prevent users from circumventing the limits.

Behind the scenes are the biggest players in the AI market: NVIDIA, OpenAI, Google and Microsoft, alongside a Thai provider responsible for the local Pathumma LLM model. The presence of a domestic model alongside foreign giants is meant to be part of building the country's technological independence, though critics point out that most of the budget still goes to foreign companies.

A Rocky Start

The launch was not without hiccups. Even before the debut, independent specialists pointed to the platform's limitations, AiPASS handles large file uploads worse and accepts fewer attachments than the free version of ChatGPT. A few hours after the successful launch, a global, five-hour ChatGPT outage also hit Thai users of the program, though no evidence was found linking the two events directly.

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul defended the project, stressing that younger generations of Thais will know how to make use of the new technology. Credit for preparing the program's infrastructure was given to Minister Chaiyanok Chidchob.

This is a good project - Anutin Charnvirakul, Prime Minister of Thailand

Opposition Criticism

The program has stirred controversy for months over its budget and spending transparency. Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, leader of the opposition People's Party, said that spending 1.6 billion baht on the TH-AI Passport was poor value for money, pointing to Singapore as an example of a country that, instead of giving citizens access to other companies' models, focused on using AI to reform public services.

Natthaphong is demanding that the project be suspended and the same funds redirected toward building a domestic AI industry, rather than spending them on buying or renting services from foreign providers. He also raised concerns about user reports that some prompts and responses generated by the system may be restricted by the government.

Significance for the Region

TH-AI Passport is one of the first examples on this scale of a country buying mass access to commercial AI models instead of investing in developing its own. This is a different approach from South Korea, which is betting on domestic models and infrastructure, and from Estonia, which recently became the first country to issue AI agents their own identification numbers. For providers like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, the Thai program sets a precedent, showing that governments can become bulk buyers of AI subscriptions for entire populations.

For Poland and the Central European region, the program is significant because it demonstrates an alternative AI policy model, based not on building domestic gigafactories or models but on bulk purchasing access to existing tools. An EU tender for AI gigafactories is currently underway, with Poland bidding for one of seven locations, showing that European governments are, for now, choosing the opposite strategy from Bangkok.

The strong turnout on day one, more than 1.3 million registrations, shows the public's strong appetite for free access to AI tools. Whether the program will translate into real economic benefits, rather than just a rise in the number of active accounts, remains an open question that will be the subject of political dispute in Thailand in the coming months.