- The Pentagon now has to send more than 1,400 reports each year to Congress.
- GenAI.mil is promoted as a tool to accelerate reporting and other productivity
- Workers didn’t know how to use AI – ‘so we just gave up’
Top Pentagon officials have publicly encouraged Department of Defense employees to use its internal generative AI tool, GenAI.mil, to help them perform routine administrative work more efficiently.
In a recent appearance, Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael called the AI-generated reports that Congress has released a success, urging Pentagon staff to “use GenAI.mil and do the best you can.”
One example Michael highlighted is the reports legally required by Congress that the Department of Defense must submit. “Let me load all the documents into it and have it write a congressional report that would otherwise take 200 staff hours and do it in five hours,” he said.
Pentagon admits to using AI to generate reports to Congress
Michael ultimately concluded that congressionally mandated reports are repetitive and can require substantial resources, but are only read by a handful of people. He believes that AI helps reduce administrative burden, allowing workers to have more free time to focus on higher value-added tasks.
The Defense Department had to send about 1,400 reports to Congress in 2020, compared to just 500 in 2000.
GenAI.mil is a relatively new program, launched in December 2025, and is now estimated to have around 1.5 million daily users among the approximately 3.5 million employees.
Rather than being a core development, GenAI.mil is more of a central platform for bringing together military-grade third-party AI tools, described as a “bespoke AI platform.” It was first launched with Google’s Gemini for Government.
At that time, in late 2025, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said: “The Department is harnessing America’s commercial genius and we are integrating generative AI into our daily battle rhythm. »
Given that it is rather a platform allowing the combination of several tools, the Ministry of War reiterated its commitment to “build[ing] an architecture that prevents AI vendor lock-in and ensures long-term flexibility.
The Pentagon’s deployment of AI is a success
While many companies around the world struggle to put company-provided AI into the hands of workers, or fail to provide relevant tools to combat shadow AI, the Pentagon’s deployment has been a success.
This is likely because the Department of Defense has removed any uncertainty about its acceptable use and provided clear guidance on when it can be used. “It wasn’t really clear where to go to get it, what you could use it for, the rules weren’t clear, so we just let it go,” Michael added.
Familiarity with AI, both through training and the platform’s ease of use, has also helped put GenAI.mil in the hands of more than two-fifths of all DoD employees. “So we just submit it to them and then we do case studies on why people use it,” he added.
However, thorough human review remains imperative, with humans ultimately responsible for the outcome they share – workers are expected to review content before submitting it.
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