The Pentagon is giving 3 million military and civilian workers access to ChatGPT and Grok through a secure AI platform built for ‘warfighter needs’
· Fortune
American service members will now have access to military versions of ChatGPT and Grok as the Pentagon tries to incorporate more AI into its daily workflows.
The Department of War said in a pair of announcements on Monday that the two services will be incorporated into its bespoke AI platform GenAI.mil, which launched in December and originally offered access only to a specialized military version of Google’s Gemini. The department said GenAI.mil already counts 1.7 million of the Department of War’s 3 million-strong workforce, which includes both military members and civilians.
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The department’s Monday announcement comes after it awarded OpenAI and Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI, which runs Grok, defense contracts worth up to $200 million each to provide the department with AI tools. It also awarded contracts at the time to Google and Anthropic.
The military version of ChatGPT, dubbed ChatGPT Mil, is part of OpenAI for Government, an initiative launched last summer meant to bring the company’s AI products to government workers.
“ChatGPT on GenAI.mil will make unclassified work throughout the Department more efficient, freeing up time and resources so DoW personnel can focus on the mission,” said Joe Larson, vice president and head of government at OpenAI, in a statement to Fortune.
“ChatGPT Mil brings a familiar commercial experience into the Department’s secure environment, tailored to warfighter needs,” read a press release from the Pentagon.
The specialized version of ChatGPT, which kicked off the AI race when it launched in 2022, will keep data within its environment and not use it to train its models. Service members can use both the specialized versions of ChatGPT and Grok for Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) at Impact Level 5 (IL5), which refers to sensitive U.S. government information that is not classified, according to the Pentagon announcement.
The vast majority of military work is unclassified and deals with document heavy yet routine work in HR, logistics, and contracting, much of which could be aided by ChatGPT’s ability to process large amounts of information, said a person familiar with uses at OpenAI.
As for the military version of Grok, or Starshield AI’s Grok for Government, the Pentagon said in its announcement that it will give its personnel access to deep thinking-inference, as well as different levels of reasoning (auto, fast, and expert). It will also enable “the Joint Force to execute missions faster and with greater precision across numerous operational contexts, ranging from market research analysis for acquisition professionals to supply chain management for logisticians,” the announcement read.
The release of ChatGPT and Grok for the military comes as War Secretary Pete Hegseth has pushed for AI to become a part of the Pentagon’s daily workflows in line with the White House’s AI action plan, which says, “The United States must aggressively adopt AI within its Armed Forces if it is to maintain its global military preeminence.”
The Department of War is turning to an “AI-first” mentality in the military that will transform how it fights, thinks, and organizes to guarantee American dominance and security, said a War Department official.
Still, reporting by DefenseScoop found in December that the rollout of the Department of War’s GenAI.mil platform, which at the time included only a military version of Google’s Gemini, was hastily done, with some service members and workers unaware of the initiative at launch.
“I want YOU to use AI”
On Dec. 9, the day of the rollout, workers saw a pop-up on their computers with a stylized GenAI.mil logo and the words “I want YOU to use AI” with a link to a government website, DefenseScoop reported. The style and suddenness of the launch made at least one unnamed senior army official and the people in their office wonder whether the pop-up was a malicious actor hacking their computers.
It wasn’t until the DoW personnel saw a memo circulated by Hegseth, along with videos on social media, in which he declared “The future of American warfare is here, and it’s spelled AI,” that fears of a cyberattack were dispelled, according to DefenseScoop.
“I expect every member of the Department to log in, learn it, and incorporate it into your workflows immediately. AI should be in your battle rhythm every single day,” Hegseth’s December memo read.
Notably absent from Monday’s addition of Grok and ChatGPT to GenAI.mil is Anthropic’s Claude. The AI company led by Dario Amodei had a falling out with the Department of War that broke into the public in January when Hegseth, upon announcing the Pentagon would add Grok to its list of generative AI providers, publicly criticized AI models that “won’t allow you to fight wars,” a jab later revealed to be directed at Anthropic over the company’s push to get the Pentagon to agree not to use its technology for autonomous weapons or surveillance as it negotiated a contract.
In February, President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology in a process meant to wrap up at the latest by the end of this month. Hegseth said at the time he would designate the company a “supply chain risk.” Anthropic sued a month later.
Last week, a judge ruled that the Department of War acted unlawfully by designating Anthropic a supply chain risk.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com