The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has raised concerns about the agency’s failure to update its public strategy for artificial intelligence.

The office emphasized the importance of taking a proactive approach in a report on its management and performance challenges.

“ While the Department has made efforts to adapt to the change in the technological landscape, such as hiring the Department’s first Chief Science and Technology Advisor and Chief AI Officer, the most recent publicly issued strategy on AI from the Department—which outlines an AI adoption and coordination strategy with DOJ component responsibilities—is from 2020,” OIG said in the report.

At the same time, it also notes that the Justice Department employs various AI techniques, including machine learning for classifying and detecting anomalies in drug samples, topic modeling and clustering for streamlining records review, machine translation for language processing, and other algorithms to manage information such as law enforcement tips, multimedia data, and case documents.

“As the use of more advanced AI increases, the Department cannot afford to be reactive to the risks and consequences of AI, as GAO reported in May 2023,” it added.