Government AI Models Advancing, Increasing Productivity

The goal is to deploy the latest and greatest American artificial intelligence models and platforms within the War Department, said Deya Banisakher, acting director for Frontier AI at the Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Office and program manager for GenAI.mil.

Banisakher and others spoke today during GenAI.mil Excite Day at the Pentagon.

Some 1.7 million users are currently using artificial intelligence within the department, Banisakher said. Everyone with a common access card can access Google's Gemini, Starshield AI's Grok for Government and OpenAI's ChatGPT Mil.

"We've recently gotten closer and closer to parity with commercial models and platforms, where we started releasing models on the same day as public releases," Banisakher said.

The models are increasing productivity throughout the department.

"People are able to research, summarize and extract information from droves of data that they previously couldn't do," he said, adding that AI is saving billions of man-hours.

Warfighters can code applications on the fly. It's aiding graphic designers, operations research, acquisition and finance professionals, as well as warfighters across the services, he said.

For example, within the Navy, Banisakher said a project would take developers two to three years to code manually, costing upward of $10 million. However, three Navy developers recently used GenAI.mil to modernize that coding in 30 days.

The goal is to accelerate AI adoption throughout the department by putting the right tools and platforms in warfighters' hands and plugging into their workflows at all classification levels.

The next step will be putting AI on the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network and on the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System.

Jonathan Buchanan, the authorizing official for the GenAI.mil platforms, said the three AI platforms soft-launched to ensure they could be scaled for the department and be monitored for security and performance.

"I think we're just scratching the surface with what is totally possible with these platforms. I feel like we are headed in a very good trajectory with how these platforms directly affect the warfighter and the capabilities that will bring to bear in the future," he said.

Gerard Connolly, a Starshield AI Grok for Government technician, said that as large language model databases improve over time, AI will become even more useful and powerful.

Grok focuses on four things, Connolly said. It can create teams and share work. Automations in Grok have been trained to do certain tasks and provide timely updates. Grok's projects mode lets teams upload files, collaborate within a workspace and train others on those files. The AI platform's skills mode rapidly generates recurring administrative documents like executive summaries and battlefield updates.

More than 300,000 people in the department have been using Grok since it launched last month, and Connolly said he expects that number to rise.

ChatGPT Mil launched concurrently and is seeing similar numbers.

"We are excited because that tells us that the users are not only sort of onboarding but are staying, and they're finding value in the product that we have," said Jonathan Bal, lead for the War Department portfolio at OpenAI.

Bal added that as AI is integrated into workflows, the hope is that it accelerates warfighter productivity.

Gemini for Government, which launched in December 2025, was the first AI platform deployed throughout the department. Joshua Marcuse, director of defense strategy at Google Public Sector, said the workforce uses it for tasks such as coding, designing chips, recruiting, hiring, promotions, retention, finance, cybersecurity and detecting insider threats.

Marcuse said national security is a passion for people at Google Public Sector, adding, "We're so proud to serve this mission."