AI is a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
AI is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to catalyse faster economic growth, boost social inclusion and address many of society’s most important challenges.3 In the last few years, we have seen rapid improvements in the capabilities of AI, spurred on by the development of the transformer model architecture by Google researchers in 2017. In our research, we found that AI could help power the next stage of Thailand’s growth, boosting the economy by THB 1.2 trillion (USD 35 billion), a 7% increase in GVA.
In 2025, early adopters of AI are already seeing significant benefits from their use of AI to save them time and assist with their work – and over time, those benefits are likely to grow as AI increasingly reforms business processes, enables new kinds of products, and ultimately accelerates research and economic growth. 60% of people in Thailand told us they were optimistic about the potential of AI for their country, and 62% for how it would impact their lives specifically.
of people in Thailand told us they were optimistic about the potential of AI for their country.
of people in Thailand told us they were optimistic about how it would impact their lives specifically.
AI's exponential economic impact.
Thais are enthusiastically embracing AI.
Just as smartphones transformed Thailand’s tech landscape, AI adoption is now accelerating at a similarly rapid pace.4 The country had 6x more AI users in 2024 compared to 2023, and almost 3x more users in 2025 compared to 2024.5
People have been quick to integrate generative AI tools into their tasks at work, and this is especially the case among younger workers. In total, 57% of people we surveyed in Thailand – and 65% of those under 35 – said that they were already using a generative AI tool weekly in their work lives.
said that they were already using a generative AI tool weekly in their work lives. This rises to
of Thais aged under 35.
How are Thais using AI?
Can you think of any ways you would use AI in your [personal/work] life?
Responses are edited for grammar and spelling, but otherwise unchanged.
All responses taken from a Public First survey of Thai adults
AI can help boost Thailand’s economic competitiveness.
According to the World Competitiveness Rankings by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), Thailand is already the 2nd most economically competitive country in Southeast Asia – and its economic competitiveness ranking has risen from 21st rank to 8th globally over the last five years.6
Our research finds that AI is set to be a powerful driver for the next stage of Thailand’s growth by:
Enhancing productivity and wages for Thai workers.
Catalysing growth in Thailand’s key sectors, including agriculture, manufacturing, tourism and the creative industries.
Driving greater foreign direct investment into Thailand.
Over the next 10 years, we estimate that AI could help boost Thailand’s global economic status by reducing the gap between Thailand’s GDP per capita and the OECD average by
AI can help enhance productivity and wages for Thai workers.
Thailand has a major opportunity to drastically improve labour productivity, and AI could help accelerate this shift. According to our analysis, today’s AI technologies are likely to significantly augment around 37% of workers, boosting their productivity. By contrast, we found that less than 5% of today’s workers are at risk of displacement from AI.7 58% of workers are likely to be unaffected.
On average, we estimate that AI could save the average worker 3 hours in administrative tasks a week.
By boosting productivity and allowing workers to focus on higher value tasks, AI raises the value of hours worked and creates potential wage increases of over 6%.
AI can catalyse growth in Thailand’s key sectors.
Why it matters:
How AI can help:
Agriculture.
The agricultural sector has long been a major part of the Thai economy. It accounts for nearly 9% of GDP representing THB 1.6 trillion (USD 44 billion).8
THB 110 billion
AI could help enable precision farming, earlier detection of pests and smarter use of water. We estimate that AI could help boost the productivity of the agricultural sector in Thailand by THB 110 billion (USD 3.1 billion).
Manufacturing.
Taking advantage of digitalisation and AI can help Thailand’s manufacturing firms boost productivity in an increasingly competitive environment, enabling the country to build on its current strengths in cars, food processing and electronics.
+6% Productivity Boost
AI could help firms in the manufacturing sector optimise their supply chain, reduce downtime and minimise defects. Even looking only at the labour productivity impact, we estimate AI could boost the productivity of manufacturing by 6%.
Creative industries.
Thailand has a burgeoning creative sector, ranging from traditional arts to contemporary film, video and fast growing gaming market.9
THB 44 billion
For both independent creators and traditional media companies, generative AI could play a powerful role helping democratise access to higher production values, enabling new forms and making it easier to convert existing content to new formats and languages. We estimate that AI could help increase the size of the creative sector in Thailand by THB 44 billion (USD 1.2 billion).
Tourism.
THB 75 billion
AI could help tourists travel more easily by overcoming language barriers and creating personalised travel plans. In total, we estimate that small businesses in Thailand could gain THB 75 billion (USD 2.1 billion) in revenue from tourism enabled by AI.
Google AI is helping creators scale smarter and reach global audiences.
Point of View is one of Thailand’s most-followed YouTube channels, with over 3.5 million subscribers and covering topics in history, science, and culture. Its creator, View, has always looked for ways to make her content more engaging and accessible, and saw AI as a way to scale without compromising quality. That led her to adopt Google Gemini to help
with tasks like translating video titles into more than 20 languages, planning travel shoots, and managing multilingual publishing.
By integrating tools like Gemini and Google Translate into her workflow, she has made her evergreen content more accessible to global audiences, from Vietnam to France. Translations are faster, costs are lower, and international engagement continues to grow. For View, AI isn’t about replacing creativity. It’s about removing barriers and giving her team more time to focus on creating thoughtful, high-quality content that informs, inspires, and entertains.
“AI is a tool. It reduces my working time, cuts costs, and helps me reach a larger audience. If there’s a tool that can help with even more, I’m open to using it.”
View
Creator of “Point of View”
AI can help to drive greater foreign direct investment into Thailand.
As the world leans into an AI-enabled future, Thailand has demonstrated its potential in hardware manufacturing, semiconductor assembly, and data infrastructure.12 The country is therefore well placed to attract increasing FDI, as global technology companies and regional players look to scale their AI operations.
Investment in foundational infrastructure such as data centres will then have major positive spillovers into the Thai economy, creating business opportunities, new income streams, and further building investor confidence. For example, in 2024, Google committed THB 36 billion (USD 1 billion) in Cloud investment to set up a data centre and cloud region to cater to growing cloud computing demand. The project will support services across Google Cloud, Search, Maps, Workspace, and AI, and is expected to generate around 14,000 jobs annually through 2029.13
In total, we estimate that Thailand could attract an additional
(USD 47 billion) in FDI over the next decade, as a robust AI ecosystem and modern digital infrastructure make Thailand a more appealing destination for global companies.
How Google is contributing to Thailand.
For over a decade, Google has been investing in AI to advance its mission to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. From key language understanding techniques, to the Transformer architecture underlying today’s generative AI revolution, Google researchers have been behind a significant number of defining AI breakthroughs.
Today, Google is expanding access to AI for billions in Asia Pacific through products like Maps, Search, Android, Gemini and NotebookLM while helping businesses be more productive and connect with new customers.
This value adds up. In 2024, Google Search, Google Maps, Google Play, Google Drive, and YouTube helped provide THB 1.8 trillion (USD 50 billion) of additional consumer benefits in Thailand.
This is equivalent to a monthly benefit of THB 2,800 (USD 81) for the average online adult, which is the result of easier access to information, increased productivity and a variety of entertainment and enrichment benefits.
Google acts as a crucial economic catalyst: connecting businesses with customers worldwide, enhancing business productivity and giving Thai creators and developers new platforms through which they can reach the world. In 2024, Google Search, Google Ads, Google AdSense, Google Play, Google Cloud, and YouTube helped provide THB 85 billion (USD 2.4 billion) of economic activity
for businesses.