OpenAI has been awarded a $200 million contract to continue developing artificial intelligence prototypes for the Defense Department.
The one-year other transaction agreement, announced Tuesday, will focus on how what the company calls “frontier AI” can aid in DOD’s administrative operations, health care for soldiers and families, cyber operations and the management of program and acquisition data.
In its blog post on the award, OpenAI said the contract with DOD represents the company’s first such arrangement under its OpenAI for Government initiative that includes the ChatGPT Gov product.
OpenAI unveiled its government-focused ChatGPT offering in January to act as a large language model similar to the original product, as well as one that gives agencies a chatbot service more specifically designed to incorporate government materials and documents into the outputs.
The DOD contract is a first for OpenAI in terms of prime contract work with the U.S. government and follows the April announcement of a partnership with Anduril, which is incorporating the former’s AI offerings into systems for countering unmanned aerial systems.
Also in April, Microsoft’s OpenAI-enabled Azure offerings were approved for use at the highest level of security classification. That move makes the tools available for the national security community.
OpenAI said its work for the DOD contract will fall under the company’s current usage policy, which bans its services from being used to “develop or use weapons” and “injure others or destroy property.”
