Anutin defends TH-AI Passport as opposition seeks halt

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has insisted that the government will press ahead with the TH-AI Passport project, putting artificial intelligence at the centre of Thailand’s development agenda even as the opposition calls for the 1.6-billion-baht scheme to be cancelled and investigated.

The dispute has turned the project into a test of two competing arguments: the government’s claim that broad access to AI is now essential for national competitiveness, and the opposition’s warning that public money should not be used to buy foreign AI services through a project it says remains clouded by procurement questions.

Anutin said the government would move forward with TH-AI Passport in full despite criticism from the opposition over the project’s terms of reference, or TOR. He said AI was becoming a decisive tool for the country’s future competitiveness and that the state had a responsibility to ensure people could access and use advanced technology more widely.

He said the world was moving into an era in which AI would play an important role in daily life, education, work and economic development. If people could not access or benefit from AI, they risked losing opportunities and falling behind in global competition.

“Thailand must grow along with the world of AI technology. If people cannot access AI today, it may not mean they cannot live, but they will fall behind and fail to keep pace with global change,” Anutin said.

The prime minister said Thailand already had strong potential in technology and communications, as well as people capable of developing software, digital systems and innovation. That capability, he said, should be extended to the wider public so that advanced technology can help improve quality of life and strengthen national competitiveness.

 

His comments came as the People’s Party escalated its criticism of TH-AI Passport during a meeting of its shadow Cabinet at Parliament. Party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut led its budget and IT teams in presenting what they described as evidence of irregularities in the 1.6-billion-baht project.

The opposition party said the prime minister should order the project cancelled and redirect the same budget towards building Thailand’s AI industry, rather than spending it on the purchase or rental of services from overseas providers.

 

Teerachart Kortrakul, a member of the opposition leader’s working team and the People’s Party’s digital policy team, said three major questions remained unanswered after a public hearing on June 11.

The first concerned the TOR’s conditions on tokens, or usage volume.

The second related to a change in stated performance capacity. According to Teerachart, the TOR initially referred to service capacity of 500,000 users per hour, while the permanent secretary of the Digital Economy and Society Ministry later said this would be changed to 5 million users per second.

Teerachart said the ministry should clarify whether TOR details could be adjusted so freely, arguing that the issue raised questions about the procurement process and whether a winning bidder could effectively change specifications without meaningful limits.

The third question concerned the project timeline. Teerachart said TH-AI Passport was submitted to the economic Cabinet on November 10, 2025, with a registration period of 90 days. However, during a public hearing on December 15, 2025, that period was shortened to 30 days, while the service launch period was reduced from 120 days to 90 days.

He said those changes gave the impression of unusual urgency. He also raised questions over the addition of public-relations advertising screens in 1,500 convenience-store branches, amounting to 6,000 display points, which he said were not included in the earlier draft submitted to the economic Cabinet.

The opposition has linked these timing and TOR changes to questions over why project details were adjusted during a caretaker government period.

 

Rukchanok Srinork, a People’s Party list MP, said the party had found digital traces that raised concerns about whether the project had been prepared before the formal procurement process was completed.

She alleged that files connected to the company overseeing TH-AI Passport were created on October 27, 2025, even though the project’s public hearing and bidding process took place in late December 2025 and the winning bidder was announced in late January 2026.

Rukchanok said the findings suggested the need to examine whether the project had been arranged in advance. She also claimed that similar projects had been found in two other ministries — the Education Ministry and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation — with a combined value of nearly 10 billion baht.

She called for the TOR to be reviewed or for the project to be put on hold.

The government, however, has rejected the idea that the prime minister needs to step in and halt the project. Anutin said responsibility for the project rested with the Digital Economy and Society Ministry, with the ministry’s permanent secretary in charge of the operational process. He also noted that the digital economy minister had already explained the details to the public.

Anutin said the key point was whether the project complied with the law, official regulations and good governance principles. If all procedures were lawful, transparent and open to scrutiny, he said, the government would be fulfilling the policy role it had assigned.

Asked whether he was confident there was no conflict of interest or hidden benefit, Anutin said his government had no culture of backroom interests and no reason to allow personal gain to become involved in work carried out for the country.

He said the administration was ready to be examined by all relevant bodies and that it placed importance on fighting corruption in every area, including procurement, transfers and appointments, transnational crime and money-laundering cases.

On calls for the TH-AI Passport TOR to be reviewed, Anutin said he saw no need to interfere in the work of the Digital Economy and Society Ministry because legal mechanisms and oversight systems were already in place.

“If anything is incorrect, the system itself will prevent the project from moving forward. But if everything is in line with the law, the project can proceed,” Anutin said.

Asked directly whether the government would continue with TH-AI Passport, he said it would certainly push the project forward because people were waiting for access to AI services that could respond quickly and effectively to their needs.

“People are waiting for AI. AI must respond immediately. In today’s world of earning a living, people cannot wait until the next day for an answer. If they ask today, they must receive an answer in time. This is what the government must push forward,” he said.

The People’s Party, however, argues that the issue is not whether Thailand should develop AI, but how public money should be used to do so.

Pawoot Pongvitayapanu, a People’s Party list MP, proposed that the 1.6-billion-baht budget be shifted away from TH-AI Passport and instead used to invest in computing hardware as national digital infrastructure.

He said Thailand should support existing domestic AI initiatives such as ThaiLLM under the Big Data Institute, back startups and SMEs through innovation vouchers, and attract major global technology companies to establish research and development centres in Thailand through Board of Investment incentives.

Pawoot also proposed changing the project’s key performance indicators from counting the number of distributed user rights to measuring real productivity and income gains. He said the Digital Economy and Society Ministry should set standards and reference prices rather than act as the project initiator itself.

He added that if Thailand needed to buy foreign AI services, the deal should not be made through an intermediary but should be handled through a government-to-government arrangement. He also called for broader skills development for the public, SMEs and the public sector, along with efforts to create more digital jobs.

Natthaphong said the government’s decision on whether to proceed with or cancel TH-AI Passport would show whether it genuinely intended to make AI a national agenda or was more interested in the project budget.

He said suspected irregularities in TH-AI Passport and similar projects reflected a shift in alleged favouritism from construction projects, which the public had become more familiar with, to technology projects whose technical complexity made them harder to scrutinise.

Natthaphong also questioned why Thailand’s national AI policy mechanism had not been used. He said the country already had a committee responsible for driving the national artificial intelligence action plan, bringing together the Digital Economy and Society Ministry, the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation, and the Education Ministry.

Since the change of government, he said, the prime minister had not convened the committee, even though it was the country’s highest-level AI policy body. He also said the prime minister, as chair of the economic Cabinet, had not shown leadership in managing the issue.

Natthaphong called on the prime minister to suspend TH-AI Passport immediately, reform the use of the Digital Economy and Society Fund to make it transparent, and change the direction of spending from buying services to building a new national industry.

He said that if no action was taken, the opposition would release further information in several rounds and file complaints with relevant agencies, including the National Anti-Corruption Commission.

For now, the government and the opposition remain sharply divided. Anutin says Thailand cannot afford to delay mass access to AI, while the People’s Party says the country should use the controversy as a turning point to build its own AI capacity rather than spending public money on a project it believes still requires deeper scrutiny.

The controversy has been building for weeks. Earlier reports noted that TH-AI Passport is designed as a national platform to distribute access to premium generative AI tools to Thai users, with the government arguing that the average cost is around 27 baht per person per month and that the scheme would help narrow Thailand’s AI adoption gap. However, scrutiny has intensified over the project’s fast approval, alleged tailored specifications, bidding process and whether the 1.6-billion-baht budget will create real AI literacy rather than simply expand access to foreign AI services. (Nation Thailand: TH-AI Passport project faces scrutiny over fast approval and alleged tailored specs)

The debate widened further after the TH Consortium, a joint venture between Turnkey Communication Services Plc and Human Intelligent Co Ltd, was reported to have won the tender, while opposition MPs continued to question the speed and transparency of the process. A later report also said the Digital Economy and Society Ministry had rejected calls to suspend the project, defending both its cost and expected benefits as questions persisted over the TOR, budget and contractor process. (Nation Thailand: TH-AI Passport tender faces scrutiny over 1.6bn-baht project) 

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