Musk’s DOGE Deploys Chatbot After Firing Workers

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is rolling out a proprietary chatbot, GSAi, to automate tasks for federal workers amid massive job cuts.

Around 1,500 employees at the General Services Administration (GSA) now have access to the AI tool, which aims to replace some of the work previously handled by terminated or resigned staff, as first reported by WIRED.

The chatbot’s deployment comes as DOGE accelerates its workforce reductions, which some experts have called “the largest job cut in American history,” as noted by Gizmodo.

GSAi, similar to ChatGPT, is designed to assist with routine administrative tasks. According to an internal memo, reported by WIRED, employees can use it to “draft emails, create talking points, summarize text, [and] write code.”

However, workers are restricted from entering nonpublic or controlled unclassified information, limiting its usefulness. One GSA employee told WIRED that the chatbot is “about as good as an intern” and provides “generic and guessable answers.”

The chatbot had been in development before DOGE’s involvement, with the Treasury and the Department of Health and Human Services previously exploring chatbot interfaces for internal use.

WIRED reports that the Department of Education was also collaborating with GSA on a chatbot for support tasks. However, an employee described these projects as “janky,” and they had not been widely deployed until DOGE hastened their rollout.

In February, DOGE tested GSAi with 150 users before expanding its availability. Employees interact with the chatbot through an interface resembling ChatGPT, with models such as Claude Haiku 3.5, Claude Sonnet 3.5 v2, and Meta LLaMa 3.2 available depending on the task, as reported by WIRED.

“What is the larger strategy here? Is it giving everyone AI and then that legitimizes more layoffs?” an AI expert questioned in WIRED. “That wouldn’t surprise me.”

The move to deploy AI coincides with sweeping reductions in the government’s tech workforce. At a recent town hall, Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer now leading the GSA’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), announced that the agency’s tech division would shrink by 50% in the coming weeks, said WIRED.

Last week, around 90 technologists were let go. Moving forward, TTS will focus on public-facing projects like Login.gov and Cloud.gov, cutting all other non-mandated work. “We will be a results-oriented and high-performance team,” Shedd stated, reinforcing the administration’s push for AI-driven efficiency, as reported by WIRED.

However, with thousands of workers already dismissed, some question whether AI can truly replace the expertise lost.