UPDATED 18:40 EST / JANUARY 28 2025

AI

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Gov to accelerate government adoption of AI

OpenAI is trying to cozy up further with the U.S. government through the launch of “ChatGPT Gov,” a special version of its iconic chatbot that’s geared to federal agencies.

The company said ChatGPT Gov will give government workers a more secure way to access its technology that meets the highest internal security standards. In a blog post, it said it has high hopes for the adoption of artificial intelligence in the public sector, believing that it will boost the efficiency and productivity of agencies.

“[it is] crucial for maintaining and enhancing America’s global leadership in this technology,” OpenAI said in a statement.

In addition, the company says, by partnering with the U.S. government, it can help to ensure that policymakers better understand the technology.

ChatGPT Gov differs from the standard ChatGPT service because it allows government agencies to use the company’s large language models within their own secure hosting environment. Customers can choose an environment within Microsoft Azure’s commercial cloud platform, or alternatively set it up in a more secure Azure Government cloud tenant.

The advantage of this is that government agencies will have better control over security and privacy, which will make it easier for them to adhere to strict compliance requirements, OpenAI said. It also means ChatGPT Gov can handle sensitive, nonpublic data, the company said.

Government workers won’t notice any real differences between ChatGPT Gov and the regular chatbot, as it comes with most of the same features and capabilities found in ChatGPT Enterprise. For instance, users will be able to save and share their chats within a private workspace, upload text and image files. And there’s an administrative console for admins to manage users, groups and access features such as single sign-on.

Like ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Gov allows users to access the company’s most advanced large language model, GPT-4o, which specializes in tasks such as summarization, text interpretation, coding, mathematics and image recognition.

In a demonstration, the company showcased ChatGPT Gov’s vision capabilities, showing how a user can take a photo of a document and upload it to the model in order to summarize its contents. It can also translate documents into multiple languages, and it can do the same for handwritten notes.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller praised the launch of ChatGPT Gov as a “good move” by the company, as governments everywhere are increasingly looking to see how AI can benefit them and streamline the work they do.

“The AI wars are engulfing government processes, and that’s why OpenAI has launched a version of ChatGPT that can meet their needs from the perspective of security and compliance,” he said. “It’s giving governments the opportunity to adopt AI tools, and it’s important for OpenAI to have this capability in place.”

According to OpenAI, the launch of ChatGPT Gov aligns with new U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent statement about the need for the country to maintain its global leadership in AI development. By giving government workers access to cutting-edge AI technology, it can help to maintain its competitive advantage, the company believes.

There’s reason to think that ChatGPT Gov will be popular, as the standard version of the chatbot already has more than 90,000 users across more than 3,500 federal, state and local government agencies. Those users have sent a combined 19 million messages to ChatGPT in support of their day-to-day work, the company said.

Early adopters of ChatGPT Gov include the Air Force Research Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the State of Minnesota’s Enterprise Translations Office and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Image: SiliconANGLE/Dreamina

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