DOGE rolling out an AI chatbot to automate government tasks
What's the story
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has deployed a proprietary chatbot, GSAi, for 1,500 employees at the General Services Administration (GSA).
This is part of a continuous effort to automate tasks previously done by humans.
The GSAi will help with "general" tasks similar to commercial tools such as ChatGPT and Claude. However, it has been specially tailored for government use, a GSA worker told WIRED.
Functionality
GSAi's capabilities and user interface
GSAi was initially piloted in February with 150 users and is now set to be rolled out across the agency.
Federal employees can now interact with GSAi through an interface similar to ChatGPT.
The default model is Claude Haiku 3.5, but users can choose between Claude Sonnet 3.5 v2 or Meta LLaMa 3.2 based on their tasks.
Applications
Potential uses and limitations
An internal memo on GSAi talks about its possible applications, including drafting emails, generating talking points, summarizing text, and writing code.
However, it warns against using federal non-public information or personally identifiable information as inputs.
Another memo provides tips to employees on writing effective prompts for the chatbot.
Despite its capabilities, some users have compared GSAi's performance to that of an intern, citing its generic and guessable answers.
Interest
Other government agencies consider using chatbot
Other government agencies are also eyeing a GSA chatbot.
The Treasury and the Department of Health and Human Services recently considered using a GSA chatbot internally and at their outward-facing contact centers. However, it is unclear if that chatbot would be GSAi.
The United States Army is also using a generative AI tool called CamoGPT to identify and remove references to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility from training materials.
Expansion
GSAi's development and future plans
A project to introduce a chatbot to the Department of Education for support, started in February between GSA and the Department of Education but was eventually scuttled.
Despite such setbacks, DOGE's leadership has greatly accelerated GSAi's deployment timeline.
The ultimate aim is to use GSAi to analyze contract and procurement data.