The federal government is stepping into the future and embracing artificial intelligence, specifically ChatGPT, across its agencies, which proponents say will streamline productivity while solidifying President Donald Trump’s pledge to keep the U.S. in the driver’s seat of the cutting-edge technology, Fox News Digital exclusively learned.
The U.S. General Services Administration announced Wednesday that OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise is now available to all federal agencies to incorporate into their workflow at a $1 per agency cost, the GSA told Fox Digital. The deal with OpenAI, the tech company behind ChatGPT, is part of GSA’s OneGov Strategy that aims to modernize ‘how the federal government purchases goods and services’ under the Trump administration.
‘The use of this tool has been deployed and tested with responsible policy makers, with responsible legal folks,’ GSA Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum told Fox News Digital of integrating AI into the federal government. ‘It’s not just auto-piloting and saying, ‘go machine’ and we just respond. … It’s automation, it’s ease of processes, but it’s also thinking about … the typical waste, fraud and abuse that we’re also focused on with this administration.’
ChatGPT is a wildly popular AI chatbot that can hold conversational discussions, provide research accompanied by citations, automate routine tasks such as data entry or file processing, summarize books or lengthy files, and even assist with brainstorming project ideas or problem-solving tasks.
‘Open AI just announced the ChatGPT has over 700 million weekly users, so the amount of commercial adoption is quite astounding,’ OpenAI’s Joseph Larson told Fox Digital Tuesday of the partnership. ‘What we didn’t want to see was a gap between the tools available for artificial intelligence to the federal workforce, a gap between what is available in … the private sector or available to the public. So with this GSA partnership, what the administration is doing, which we believe to be in line with the AI action plan, is to make ChatGPT Enterprise, which is … the most advanced AI tools available to the entire federal government will now be available to all agencies of the federal government at the nominal cost of $1 per agency.’
How federal agencies employ the technology will likely range from department to department, with employees offered access ‘to a new government user community and tailored introductory training resources’ as well as ‘custom training platforms and guided learning, either directly or through partner-led sessions’ to best fit their needs.
‘One of the best ways to make sure AI works for everyone is to put it in the hands of the people serving our country,’ OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said of the partnership in a Wednesday press release. ‘We’re proud to partner with the General Services Administration, delivering on President Trump’s AI Action Plan, to make ChatGPT available across the federal government, helping public servants deliver for the American people.’
The Trump administration rolled ut its AI Action Plan in July after Trump ordered the federal government in January to develop a plan of action for artificial intelligence in order to ‘solidify our position as the global leader in AI and secure a brighter future for all Americans.’
The AI Action Plan includes a three-pillar approach focused on American workers, free speech and protecting U.S.-built technologies.
‘We want to center America’s workers, and make sure they benefit from AI,’ AI and crypto czar David Sacks told the media in July of the AI plan.
‘The second is that we believe that AI systems should be free of ideological bias and not be designed to pursue socially engineered agendas,’ Sacks said. ‘And so we have a number of proposals there on how to make sure that AI remains truth-seeking and trustworthy. And then the third principle that cuts across the pillars is that we believe we have to prevent our advanced technologies from being misused or stolen by malicious actors. And we also have to monitor for emerging and unforeseen risks from AI.’
Gruenbaum told Fox Digital that when the GSA reviewed the administration’s AI action plan, it jumped at rolling out ‘widespread adoption’ for the government to help answer Trump’s call for the U.S. to stay on top of the artificial intelligence race on the global stage.
‘Where we see ourselves playing, obviously, is through a lot of the Federal Acquisition Service, which is the largest procurement arm in the federal government,’ he said. ‘And as we kind of examined the President’s AI action plan, heard the call to action of, ‘Hey, this is a race, and we are going to win this race.’ From our perspective, all that meant, synonymously, was widespread adoption. Those were the words, quite frankly, that the OpenAI team used to us in our very first call. And their call to action was, ‘we need to get this into the hands of as many federal workers as possible.’ We at the GSA took that extremely seriously.’
‘Everything’s kind of leading to the place of having us poised for this AI revolution,’ he added.
The Trump administration has notched massive wins in the artificial intelligence race, which has pitted the U.S. against China to develop the most high-tech artificial intelligence systems, including Oracle and OpenAI announcing in July that the companies will further develop the Stargate project, which is an effort to launch large data centers in the U.S. The two companies’ most recent announcement promises an additional 4.5 gigawatts of Stargate data center capacity, a move expected to create more than 100,000 jobs across operations, construction, and indirect roles such as manufacturing and local services.
The Stargate project includes a commitment from OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank and MGX to invest $500 billion in U.S.-based artificial intelligence infrastructure throughout the next four years.