OpenAI on Tuesday announced its biggest product launch since its enterprise rollout. It’s called ChatGPT Gov and was built specifically for U.S. government use.
The Microsoft-backed company bills the new platform as a step beyond ChatGPT Enterprise as far as security. It allows government agencies, as customers, to feed “non-public, sensitive information” into OpenAI’s models while operating within their own secure hosting environments, OpenAI CPO Kevin Weil told reporters during a briefing Monday.
Since the beginning of 2024, OpenAI said that more than 90,000 employees of federal, state and local governments have generated more than 18 million prompts within ChatGPT, using the tech to translate and summarize documents, write and draft policy memos, generate code, and build applications.
The user interface for ChatGPT Gov looks like ChatGPT Enterprise. The main difference is that government agencies will use ChatGPT Gov in their own Microsoft Azure commercial cloud, or Azure Government community cloud, so they can “manage their own security, privacy and compliance requirements,” Felipe Millon, who leads federal sales and go-to-market for OpenAI, said on the call with reporters.
For as long as artificial intelligence has been used by government agencies, it’s faced significant scrutiny due to its potentially harmful ripple effects, especially for vulnerable and minority populations, and data privacy concerns. Police use of AI has led to a number of wrongful arrests and, in California, voters rejected a plan to replace the state’s bail system with an algorithm due to concerns it would increase bias.
An OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC that the company acknowledges there are special considerations for government use of AI, and OpenAI wrote in a blog post Tuesday that the product is subject to its usage policies.
Aaron Wilkowitz, a solutions engineer at OpenAI, showed reporters a demo of a day in the life of a new Trump administration employee, allowing the person to sign into ChatGPT Gov and create a five-week plan for some of their job duties, then analyze an uploaded photo of the same printed-out plan with notes and markings all over it. Wilkowitz also demonstrated how ChatGPT Gov could draft a memo to the legal and compliance department summarizing its own AI-generated job plan and then translate the memo into different languages.
ChatGPT Enterprise, which underpins ChatGPT Gov, is currently going through the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP, and has not yet been accredited for use on nonpublic data. Weil told CNBC it’s a “long process,” adding that he couldn’t provide a timeline.
“I know President Trump is also looking at how we can potentially streamline that, because it’s one way of getting more modern software tooling into the government and helping the government run more efficiently,” Weil said. “So we’re very excited about that.”
But OpenAI’s Millon said ChatGPT Gov will be available in the “near future,” with customers potentially testing and using the product live “within a month.” He said he foresees agencies with sensitive data, such as defense, law enforcement and health care, benefiting most from the product.
When asked if the Trump administration played a role in ChatGPT Gov, Weil said he was in Washington, D.C., for the inauguration and “got to spend a lot of time with folks coming into the new administration.” He added that “the focus is on ensuring that the U.S. wins in AI” and that “our interests are very aligned.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attended the inauguration alongside other tech CEOs and has recently joined the growing tide of industry leaders publicly pronouncing their admiration for President Donald Trump or donating to his inauguration fund. Altman wrote on X that watching Trump “more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him,” adding that “he will be incredible for the country in many ways.”
A few days before the inauguration, Altman received a letter from U.S. senators expressing concern that he is attempting to “cozy up to the incoming Trump administration” with the aim of avoiding regulation and limiting scrutiny.
Regarding China’s DeepSeek, Weil told reporters the new developments don’t change how OpenAI thinks about its product road map but instead “underscores how important it is that the U.S. wins this race.”
“It’s a super competitive industry, and this is showing that it’s competitive globally, not just within the U.S.,” Weil said. “We’re committed to moving really quickly here. We want to stay ahead.”