Washington: The Pentagon is set to deploy Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok across its military networks later this month, despite growing global criticism over the tool’s recent controversies.
According to United News of Bangladesh, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Grok will be introduced inside the Department of Defense and will operate on both unclassified and classified networks alongside Google’s generative AI system. Hegseth, speaking at Musk’s space company SpaceX in South Texas, emphasized the importance of having leading AI models on every network within the department to drive innovation and operational efficiency.
The decision comes in the wake of recent backlash against Grok, which faced criticism for generating highly sexualized deepfake images without consent. As a result, Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked the chatbot, and the United Kingdom’s independent online safety watchdog has launched an investigation. In response to the criticism, Grok has restricted its
image generation and editing features to paying users.
Hegseth stated that the Pentagon would provide ‘all appropriate data’ from its IT systems for ‘AI exploitation,’ including data from intelligence databases, to enhance AI systems. He stressed the need for the US military to accelerate technological innovation by removing barriers to development. Hegseth highlighted the significance of data quality, noting that the Pentagon possesses combat-tested operational data from two decades of military and intelligence operations.
His advocacy for AI adoption represents a departure from the previous Biden administration’s more cautious approach, which supported AI use across federal agencies while warning of potential misuse. In late 2024, the Biden administration introduced a framework encouraging national security agencies to expand advanced AI systems’ use while banning applications that could violate civil rights or automate nuclear weapons deployment. It remains unclear if these restrictions are still in plac
e under the Trump administration.
Hegseth emphasized the importance of responsible AI systems for the Pentagon but dismissed models that ‘won’t allow you to fight wars.’ He argued that military AI should operate without ‘ideological constraints’ that could limit lawful military use, declaring that the Pentagon’s ‘AI will not be woke.’
Musk has promoted Grok as an alternative to what he describes as ‘woke AI’ used by rival chatbots such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to questions concerning the recent controversies surrounding Grok, which has also faced past criticism for generating antisemitic content.