More than 1.13 million Thai nationals have signed up for free access to AI technology for one year under the ‘TH-AI Passport’ project in just three days, as the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (DES) has offered an assurance that the personal data of the AI users and their behavioural usage will be kept confidential, in accordance with the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA).
DES Permanent Secretary Patchara Anuntasilpa said that 1,132,496 people have subscribed to the free service since pre-registration started on 19 August. (as of 1.30 pm yesterday).
Pre-registration remains open until end of the month and those eligible to subscribe must be Thais who are, at least, 15-year-old. The service will be fully accessible for actual use starting 31 August.
He also said that the ministry is ready to clarify any doubts over the contract for the project between the National Board of Digital Economy and Society Office (BDE) and the service provider, TH Consortium, comprising Human Intelligence Co Ltd, and Turnkey Communication Services Plc.
He disclosed that the contract had been amended pertaining to the disbursement of payments to the service provider to the ‘Pay Per Active User’ format, under which the service provider must make sure that there are at least five million login users, short of that it would face a fine.
He added that the amended contract specifies a Pay-Per-Active-User model simply to ensure greater payment clarity, aligning with the original intent of the agreement. The revised contract was also submitted to the Office of the Attorney General for review.
Under the project, users will have free access to over 30 AI models from 14 developers. The number of users is limited to five million.
For the first three months, users will be granted ‘innovator’ status and have the right to use the Pro AI model for 30 days, after which they will have to attend a training course and must score at least 100 marks in order to retain their ‘innovator’ status and to use the Pro AI model for the next month.
Patchara admitted that many subscribers have expressed doubts about the safety of their personal data, their behavioural usage of Generative AI and assessment of their online training course etc., adding that all of this information will be assessed and stored domestically for cyber safety in accordance with the law.
Regarding the .NET domain names used in the registration, he said that, after the completion of the registration process, the domain names will be automatically changed to .go.th domains.
