The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is preparing to roll out a new chatbot platform in one of its overseas cloud environments, according to a defense official.
The generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tool, currently awaiting accreditation, will be deployed at the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (Indo-Pacom) via DISA’s Joint Operational Edge cloud environment “within the next month or so,” said Jeff Marshall, director of DISA’s Hosting and Compute Center, during a Federal News Network webinar on March 25.
DISA plans to host the chatbot on one of its two Joint Operational Edge (JOE) cloud environments. To date, two JOE cloud nodes have been established at Indo-Pacom, one at U.S. European Command, and another is set to be deployed in Southwest Asia, according to Marshall.
The chatbot, developed in close collaboration with the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), will enable users to experiment with GenAI models on the Secure Internet Protocol Router (SIPRNet).
“We’re not trying to deploy this on our own. We’re not trying to make it a production system. This is [a research-and-development] system that we’re using for Indo-Pacom in order to test large language models overseas,” he said.
While similar to AFRL’s experimental GenAI chatbot launched last year, Marshall said this new initiative aims to evaluate and accelerate the deployment of commercial AI tools within classified environments.
Marshall further explained that this new cloud-based chatbot will primarily help address “What does an Indo-Pacom commander need and want to utilize AI for? … How do we then shape that to what industry can provide for us at scale?”
“We’re taking in the demand signal, we’re making sure that there is a valid need that supports us doing the deployment, and then, of course, there’s a budget to cover it,” he said.