GenAI.mil saw more than 2 million users in one week, top DOD official says

The Pentagon’s enterprise-wide generative artificial intelligence platform is continuing to see high levels of use across the department, with millions of civilians, contractors and military personnel taking advantage of the service.

In a discussion with Punchbowl News on Wednesday, Defense Department Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer Cameron Stanley said “as of last week, we’ve had over 2 million people in a week across all three models log in and use AI.”

GenAI.mil, which DOD launched in December, currently hosts three AI models: Google Cloud’s Gemini for Government, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Mil and xAI’s Grok for Government. The service provides vetted, internal AI tools to help users with unclassified tasks, such as analyzing information and creating and refining documents. 

The department employees roughly 3 million total personnel who can access GenAI.mil.

Stanley called the platform “a huge, a huge win for the department,” adding that he initially thought AI use across the Pentagon “was going to be a harder sell.”

“Before GenAI.mil was rolled out, we had a total of maybe 80,000 folks that were using AI across the entire department in similar deployments,” he said. “The first week that GenAI.mil was released last year, we had over 300,000 people log on.” 

Stanley said users were also quick to take advantage of Google Gemini for Government’s Agent Designer tool, which was rolled out on the platform in March and allows approved civilians, contractors and military personnel to create custom AI agents that can help them automate rote tasks. 

“Within two weeks [of its deployment], we had over 50,000 agents that people are using,” he said. These aren’t complex, robust agents; they’re helping people with their daily workflows.”

The latest figures continue to show a rising uptick in DOD use of tools available through GenAI.mil. During an event in July, Stanley said the platform had reached a then-record of 1.7 million users, who had created more than 100,000 custom agents.

Wednesday’s discussion about the Pentagon’s uses of AI comes amid growing concerns from some lawmakers and tech executives about the dangers posed by advanced models, as well as how the capabilities will be utilized moving forward. During a speech at the UN on Tuesday, President Donald Trump voiced his continued opposition to slowing AI development, saying “we’re going to encourage it, not rein it in.”

Stanley similarly argued that “unilateral disarmament is the wrong approach.”