As the U.S. Department of Defense is locked in a legal dispute with artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic, it is expanding cooperation with Google.
Google said on the 10th (local time) that it introduced AI agent features to the defense AI platform "GenAI.mil." As a result, Ministry of National Defense employees and U.S. service members will be able to build and use agents that automate administrative tasks such as drafting documents and planning projects in unclassified areas using only natural-language commands.
Google also said it is offering eight prebuilt agents that perform tasks such as meeting minutes summarization, budgeting, and reviewing defense strategy guidance.
Google said that after introducing its AI model Gemini to the Ministry of National Defense systems in Dec. last year, users topped 1 million in just over a month, and five of the six military branches designated Gemini as their official AI platform.
The Ministry of National Defense and Google are also discussing ways to expand the scope of AI agents to classified and top secret areas in the future.
Emil Michael, Vice Minister for research and engineering at the Ministry of National Defense and chief technology officer (CTO), told Bloomberg News, "Starting in the unclassified space is because that has the most users," adding, "We plan to apply it to classified and top secret work later." He called Google a "trusted partner."
The expanded cooperation comes as tensions escalate between the Ministry of National Defense and Anthropic. After disagreements over the scope of AI use, the Ministry of National Defense designated Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" corporation, and Anthropic pushed back by filing lawsuits the day before in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Vice Minister Michael said, "This is not an issue to be resolved in court," adding, "The Ministry of National Defense is moving on to the next step."
Meanwhile, Google faced internal backlash in 2018 over its participation in the Ministry of National Defense's AI project to analyze drone footage. The company did not renew the contract following employee opposition at the time. Recently, in connection with the Anthropic lawsuit, some Google employees were also reported to have submitted briefs supporting Anthropic's position.