The U.S. Department of State is working on an internal chatbot, primarily in response to employee requests for assistance in streamlining processes such as translation, according to Chief Information Officer Kelly Fletcher.

While speaking at Palo Alto Networks’ Public Sector Ignite event, Fletcher reportedly highlighted the growing demand within the agency’s workforce for a generative AI chatbot, especially as publicly available tools like ChatGPT gain popularity.

Fletcher also explained the potential of chatbots in addressing translation requirements. For instance, one could upload a 30-page document in Russian into the model and request a summary in English.

Additionally, the tool could be utilized to input public information from various countries, such as regional news, into systems, and generate an English summary.

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is also developing a technology that can intake data from multiple sources, plug it into a database, and run a large language model on top of it. The chatbot, however, is not designed to help defense personnel in mission-critical scenarios but to help assist captains with post-mission reports. 

The Pentagon’s IT Division is in the process of developing a prototype that could be launched internally this year, according to reports.  However, Steve Wallace, the agency’s Chief Technology Officer and Head of Emerging Technologies, did acknowledge that most commercially available large language models like GPT-4, which powers ChatGPT, run on the cloud.