Pentagon Deploys Grok and ChatGPT for Military Use Across 3 Million Department of Defense Personnel

The Pentagon now has its own version of ChatGPT and Grok

The Pentagon has launched versions of OpenAI's ChatGPT and xAI's Grok, giving 3 million civilian and military personnel access to generative AI tools that have been tailored to "warfighter needs." ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government -- custom versions of the popular consumer generative AI tools -- are now part of GenAI.mil, a centralized, secure portal launched last year. GenAI.mil, which offered Google Gemini when it first launched, is designed to give Department of Defense employees access to commercial frontier AI models without sending sensitive government data through ordinary consumer channels. In particular, the official military version is exempt from the data collection that is difficult to avoid in consumer tech products. And according to the Department of Defense, the generative AI portal has proven popular. GenAI.mil has already onboarded more than 1.7 million unique users out of the department's 3 million personnel, according to the department. These latest additions are part of the Pentagon's broader effort to use AI tools to accelerate work and give the Department of Defense an edge without sacrificing security. They also highlight the absence of Anthropic's Claude model and the Pentagon's effort to work with other companies following its dispute with the frontier lab. Anthropic was labeled a supply-chain risk by the Trump administration -- a designation that it is currently fighting in court -- after it refused to give the Pentagon unrestricted use of its AI tools and instead insisted on certain safety guardrails. ChatGPT Mil, which came out of the company's OpenAI for Government program, will offer an experience familiar to commercial ChatGPT users. The tool will focus on chat, files, projects, and custom GPTs, according to the Defense Department. The tool will also support document-heavy, routine unclassified work such as administrative tasks, logistics, planning, and policy. Other features will be added over time. The Pentagon positioned Grok's capabilities and potential uses in much broader and more militaristic terms. "Starshield AI's Grok for Government will provide the warfighter with immediate productivity gains, stronger knowledge continuity and more secure and efficient collaboration," according to the Defense Department's press release. (SpaceX's Starshield AI is a secure satellite network that uses the company's existing Starlink tech) The department added that Grok would allow its military "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 Pentagon has struck deals with a number of other tech companies in a bid to boost its AI capabilities, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Reflection AI.

Pentagon brings on Grok and ChatGPT for military use

The Pentagon announced on Monday that it brought on Starshield AI's Grok for Government and OpenAI's ChatGPT for unclassified, military use, expanding the number of AI assistants on the department's platform. According to the Pentagon, Grok for Government will provide the warfighter with "immediate productivity gains, stronger knowledge continuity and more secure and efficient collaboration." The Defense Department's (DOD) personnel will gain access to "advanced capabilities, including deep-thinking inference, adaptive reasoning modes (Auto, Fast, and Expert), customizable workspaces, persistent projects and reusable 'playbooks' that capture and scale institutional knowledge," the agency said in the announcement. "Starshield AI's Grok for Government enables 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 department said. The DOD said that ChatGPT Mil will support "document-heavy unclassified work across the Department, including planning, policy, logistics, and administration, and is built for scale to support" over 3 million of the Pentagon's personnel. The models will be offered through the Pentagon's GenAI.mil platform, which was launched last December to provide commercial AI products to the millions of DOD employees. The platform was first launched with only Google Cloud's Gemini for Government products, and over 1.7 million users are onboarded to the platform, the DOD said. It comes months after Elon Musk's xAI firm and OpenAI reached deals with the Pentagon to deploy their models for classified settings. In the weeks ahead of these deals, the Pentagon in February moved to ban products from the AI firm Anthropic after the tech company sought safeguards for its model Claude against fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. The department designated Anthropic as a national security supply chain risk. Last week, a federal judge struck down the designation, saying the department's measures against the tech giant were "illegal and baseless." The Pentagon's Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael said last week at a Breitbart News event that the Pentagon will be done with completely removing Anthropic's platforms by the end of September. Despite controversy around Grok's safety and reliability over its responses and image generation abilities, the DOD has repeatedly touted the model as a national security asset. The Pentagon's chief digital and AI officer Cameron Stanley wrote in a court filing earlier this year that Grok allowed U.S. forces to deploy more than 2,000 munitions to 2,000 targets within 96 hours in the Iran war. Grok is also being used across civil agencies. Under a deal with the General Services Administration, agencies can purchase xAI's Grok models for just 42 cents until March 2027.