State Department Encourages Use of Generative AI Tools

The State Department is promoting the use of generative artificial intelligence tools among its employees.

At the AIScoop’s AITalks event in Washington, D.C., State Chief Information Officer Kelly Fletcher, a past Potomac Officers Club event speaker, said the department encourages its workers to experiment with AI tools, particularly ChatGPT, while highlighting the importance of AI training programs, FedScoop reported.

The initiative aligns with the Biden administration’s call for government departments to explore AI applications and follows the agency’s launch of an internal chatbot serving its users.

Apart from the chatbot, the department also seeks other use cases for generative AI, including tasks such as document summarization and translation. According to Matthew Graviss, the agency’s chief data and artificial intelligence officer, the department has also been using AI for document declassification and open-source models to develop a digital research assistant for specific mandated reports.

Graviss also emphasized the efficacy of public tools for information synthesis tasks aimed at ambassadors, saying that publicly available information and tools are adequate for the task and do not require Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program or Federal Information Security Modernization Act certifications.