The United States Army is utilizing a prototype generative artificial intelligence tool designed to identify references to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) for removal from training materials, following a recent executive order from former President Donald Trump.
Officials from the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC)—the major command responsible for the training of soldiers, leader development, and the shaping of the service’s guidelines and concepts—are currently employing the AI tool, known as CamoGPT, to “review policies, programs, publications, and initiatives for DEIA and report findings,” as stated in an internal memo that WIRED has obtained.
The memo was issued in light of Trump’s signing of an executive order on January 27 titled, “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” which mandated Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to eliminate all Pentagon policies perceived as promoting what the commander-in-chief labeled as “un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories” related to race and gender. This directive encompasses even past social media posts from official US military accounts.
In a correspondence to WIRED, TRADOC spokesman Army Maj. Chris Robinson confirmed the implementation of CamoGPT for the evaluation of DEIA materials.
“[TRADOC] will diligently execute and implement all directives set forth in the Executive Orders issued by the President. We are committed to ensuring that these directives are accomplished with the highest level of professionalism, efficiency, and alignment with national security objectives,” Robinson states. “Specific internal policies and tactics cannot be publicly disclosed. However, we will utilize all available tools in our arsenal, including CamoGPT, to enhance productivity at all levels.”
CamoGPT, developed last summer to enhance productivity and operational readiness throughout the US Army, currently has around 4,000 daily users who engage with it consistently, according to Capt. Aidan Doyle, a data engineer for CamoGPT, who spoke with WIRED. The tool serves various purposes, from creating comprehensive training materials to offering multilingual translations, with TRADOC showcasing a “proof of concept and demonstration” at the annual Association of the United States Army (AUSA) conference in Washington, DC, last October, as noted by Robinson.
While Doyle refrained from detailing the exact ways TRADOC officials are employing CamoGPT to review DEIA-related policies, he explained that the process of examining documents is relatively simple.
“I would compile all the documentation you wish to analyze, organize it in a collection within CamoGPT, and then pose questions regarding the documents,” he explains. “The mechanism of retrieval-augmented generation implies that the more specific your inquiry is to the concepts within the document, the more nuanced the information the model will return.”
In practical terms, this suggests that TRADOC officials are likely inputting a vast number of documents into CamoGPT and requesting the LLM to scan for targeted keywords like “dignity” or “respect” (which the Army is currently utilizing to review past digital content) in order to pinpoint materials for subsequent modification and ensure compliance with Trump’s executive order.
The use of CamoGPT is expected to facilitate a swift transformation of the US Army’s documentation concerning the removal of DEIA-related content. “We’re competing with ‘control+F’ in Adobe Acrobat,” Doyle remarks.
