Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Monday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok will be deployed across Pentagon networks, declaring a push to feed military data into AI systems despite global controversy over the tool. “Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” Hegseth said in a speech at SpaceX in South Texas, adding that the Pentagon’s “AI will not be woke.”
The move comes days after Malaysia and Indonesia blocked Grok, and the U.K. launched an investigation, following outcry over the chatbot generating sexualized deepfakes without consent. Hegseth vowed to “make all appropriate data” from military IT and intelligence systems available for “AI exploitation,” emphasizing that AI models must operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications” and shrugging off any “that won’t allow you to fight wars.”
This aggressive adoption contrasts with the Biden administration’s more cautious AI framework, which included prohibitions on uses violating civil rights or automating nuclear weapons deployment, though it is unclear if those rules remain under the current administration.