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An aerial view of the Pentagon.

Four of the top U.S. artificial intelligence developers won contracts from the Defense Department aimed at accelerating the military’s adoption of the emerging technology. (Robert H. Reid/Stars and Stripes)

The Defense Department will begin using Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot built by Elon Musk’s startup xAI, the company said in a post Monday.

The xAI announcement came as Grok unveiled what it called “Grok for Government,” a suite that allows agencies and federal offices to adopt its chatbots for their specific uses. President Donald Trump has encouraged more rapid adoption of artificial intelligence tools since taking office in January.

Musk was a member of the Trump administration, overseeing the U.S. DOGE Service, until late May. He has since become a critic of Trump’s signature tax and spending legislation.

On Monday, xAI said its products will be “available to purchase via the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule,” allowing “every federal government department, agency, or office” to buy them.

In a news release, the Defense Department said the contract award is worth up to $200 million. The department issued similar awards to Google, Anthropic and OpenAI, it said.

“Today’s awards bring in the best U.S.-based frontier AI talent to help apply cutting-edge AI to solve DoD use cases,” said the announcement, from the agency’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office.

Grok came under fire last week after launching into an antisemitic rant and invoking Adolf Hitler after it was a programmed to be less politically correct. The incident prompted the company to say it would improve its model. A day later, xAI unveiled a sweeping update that it claimed put Grok on the cutting edge of AI development.

But the damage was done. The incident last week demonstrated the pitfalls of rapid deployment of new technology in the AI arms race and the potential consequences of training flaws or the manipulation of existing models by users.

The Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment beyond its news release.

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