Grok to be integrated into US Department of Defense AI platform

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wants to implement the AI chatbot Grok into the recently launched AI platform GenAI.mil of the US Department of Defense. Hegseth announced this on Monday during a speech at Elon Musk's space company SpaceX in Texas. According to Hegseth, Grok is to be put into operation within the Pentagon's IT systems later this month.

At the beginning of December, the US Department of Defense, which has been called the “Department of War” since September 2025, announced the launch of its new AI platform, GenAI.mil. According to the press release of December 9th, Google's chatbot Gemini will be the first to be implemented in GenAI.mil, making it accessible to more than three million users in the Pentagon. Now, the AI chatbot Grok, developed by xAI, follows.

Last July, the Department of Defense had already announced the awarding of contracts worth up to 200 million US dollars to leading US AI companies Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI. The goal, according to the press release from the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, is to integrate agentic AI workflows into various mission areas. “Very soon, we will have the world's leading AI models in every non-classified and classified network of our department,” Hegseth emphasized in his speech on Monday.

Hegseth distances himself from “woke” AI

Hegseth pointed out that the US military has “a data advantage from two decades of military and intelligence operations.” AI systems are only as good as their training data. According to the Secretary of Defense, therefore, in the future, “all suitable data” from the military's IT systems will be made available for AI use. Data from intelligence databases will also be incorporated into the Pentagon's AI systems.

Pentagon chief Hegseth also spoke of responsible use of AI within the US Department of Defense systems. AI models must work factually correctly and be mission-relevant, but at the same time be free from ideological constraints. The Pentagon's AI will not be “woke.” AI models that would not allow wars to be fought are rejected.

Grok recently heavily criticized

The announcement by the US Department of Defense to integrate Grok into its AI platform GenAI.mil is controversial. The AI chatbot has been heavily criticized since last week after users were able to generate several thousand sexualizing videos and images of women and minors per hour with the help of Grok. In response to media outrage, the microblogging service X restricted the image generation function. Since last Friday, only paying customers can publicly modify or create images with Grok.

Consequently, the British government and the EU Commission expressed criticism. The step is not a solution, emphasized a spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The EU Commission also stated that the payment measure does not change the fundamental problem. On Monday, Indonesia and Malaysia then completely blocked access to Grok. Furthermore, the British government announced that it intends to start enforcing a law this week that prohibits applications that can be used to digitally undress people. Most recently, Federal Minister of Justice Stefanie Hubig announced that she wants to take tougher action against the creation and distribution of AI-generated sexualized images.

(rah)