The Defense Department (DOD) on Aug. 31 launched military-specific versions of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Starshield AI’s Grok on GenAI.mil. The two new commercial artificial intelligence (AI) assistants are accredited at Impact Level 5 (IL5) to handle controlled unclassified information.
Under the Trump administration, the DOD was rebranded as the Department of War.
Since it launched in December 2025, GenAI.mil has onboarded more than 1.7 million unique users from the department’s more than 3 million personnel, according to the announcement of the Grok launch. The platform initially offered Google Cloud’s Gemini for Government.
The addition of two new frontier AI capabilities advances the department’s AI Acceleration Strategy and one of its core tenets – enterprise AI applications, according to DOD.
The expansion “provides another top-tier generative AI tool for warfighter advantage, eliminating vendor lock and promoting a vibrant American AI ecosystem,” DOD said in its Grok announcement.
According to the department, the Grok for Government includes deep-thinking inference; auto, fast, and expert reasoning modes; customizable workspaces; persistent projects; and reusable “playbooks” designed to capture and scale institutional knowledge.
“Starshield AI’s Grok for Government enables the Joint Force to execute missions faster and with greater precision across numerous operational contexts, ranging from market research analysis for acquisition professionals to supply chain management for logisticians,” according to the announcement.
ChatGPT Mil brings features from OpenAI’s commercial ChatGPT service into the department’s secure environment, including chat, files, projects, and custom GPTs. DOD said additional features will be introduced over time.
The system is intended to support document-heavy, unclassified work across the department, including planning, policy, logistics, and administration, and is designed to scale, according to the announcement.
“This deployment accelerates routine tasks and frees up time for more critical projects across the Joint Force,” DOD said. “Integrating ChatGPT Mil into GenAI.mil alongside existing frontier AI capabilities establishes a robust, multi-model ecosystem for the warfighter.”