$1 ChatBots for the government

This artificial intelligence (AI) firm, supported notably by Amazon (among others), will make its “Claude for Business” and “Claude for Government” products available to all three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial.

In June, the AI company also launched a series of versions of Claude designed specifically for national security agencies.

“America’s AI leadership requires that our government institutions have access to the most capable, secure AI tools available,” said Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

This move is part of a growing effort by AI companies to secure federal contracts, a trend that has become more apparent in recent months. 

For example, in early August, Open AI, one of Anthropic’s competitors, also offered its “ChatGPT for Business” conversational agent to the executive branch of the U.S. government at a cost of one dollar for the next year. According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, this is a gesture to “[help] public servants deliver for the American people.”.

In July, the US Department of Defense (now officially the Department of War) announced that it would award contracts worth up to $200 million for AI development to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and Elon Musk’s xAI.

On the same day as this statement, xAI launched new versions of its chatbot called “Grok for Government”.

“It’s a page straight out of the Palantir playbook [a data analytics platform used by government agencies and intelligence services]: land government contracts early on, forge close ties with agencies like the Department of Defense or the FBI, and then expand into the commercial market,” says journalist Mackenzie Sigalos at CNBC. “This strategy has really paid off, as Palantir’s stock has climbed more than 500% in one year,” she adds.

According to the journalist, it’s also “a way of anchoring their technology within the government itself, getting civil servants used to using it, creating dependency in work processes… and, thus, influence the way legislators and judges perceive AI even before they set firm rules for the industry.”