US Military To Use Special Versions Of ChatGPT And Grok For 3 Million Workers
The US Department of Defense is giving its civilian and military workforce access to customised versions of two of the biggest names in generative AI, adding OpenAI’s ChatGPT and xAI’s Grok to its secure AI platform.
The new services, ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government, are available through GenAI.mil, a centralised portal created by the Pentagon to provide government personnel with commercial AI capabilities in a controlled environment. The platform was initially launched with access to Google’s Gemini.
More than 1.7 million people have already used GenAI.mil, according to the Department of Defense, representing a substantial share of its roughly 3 million civilian and military personnel.
The Pentagon’s approach is aimed at addressing one of the main obstacles to using consumer AI tools inside government: how to benefit from advanced models without exposing potentially sensitive information to systems designed for the general public. The military versions operate under government-specific security arrangements and are not subject to the same data-collection practices associated with consumer AI services.
ChatGPT arrives for routine defence work
ChatGPT Mil is the latest product to emerge from OpenAI’s work with the US government. Rather than being positioned solely as a specialised battlefield system, the Pentagon says the service will initially support a range of ordinary knowledge-work tasks.
Its capabilities are expected to include conversations, file handling, projects and custom GPTs. The department sees potential applications in areas such as administration, logistics, planning and policy work, particularly where employees need to process large volumes of documents.
That makes the service part of a broader effort to incorporate generative AI into the day-to-day operations of the defence department, rather than limiting its use to highly specialised military applications.
The Pentagon has been pursuing partnerships across the technology industry as it expands those capabilities. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Nvidia and Reflection AI are among the other companies that have secured agreements or worked with the department on AI-related initiatives.
Grok deal comes amid Anthropic dispute
The inclusion of Grok also underlines the Pentagon’s increasingly varied approach to sourcing AI technology. The department has not included Anthropic’s Claude on the new platform, following a dispute between the company and the Trump administration over how its models could be used by the military.
Anthropic declined to give the Pentagon unrestricted access to its technology and sought to retain certain safety restrictions. The administration subsequently designated the company a supply-chain risk, a decision Anthropic is challenging in court.
Against that backdrop, the Pentagon has described Grok in terms extending beyond office productivity. The department says xAI’s government offering could help with tasks ranging from acquisition-related market analysis to supply-chain management.
“Starshield AI’s Grok for Government will provide the warfighter with immediate productivity gains, stronger knowledge continuity and more secure and efficient collaboration,” the Department of Defense said.
Starshield is SpaceX’s secure satellite communications business, built around technology associated with Starlink. The Pentagon says Grok could ultimately support military personnel across a range of operational settings, with the stated goal of helping them complete missions more quickly and accurately.
For now, the rollout reflects a more practical phase of military AI adoption: putting commercial frontier models into the hands of large numbers of personnel while creating dedicated infrastructure around them. How extensively those systems will be used for sensitive or operational decision-making remains a separate question from their growing role in administrative and analytical work.
Culled from https://www.firstpost.com/
