Pentagon Launches Custom Versions of ChatGPT and Grok for Personnel

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.”