The United States Air Force (USAF) and Space Force unveiled a cutting-edge generative AI tool called NIPRGPT. This innovative platform, which stands for Non-classified Internet Protocol Generative Pre-training Transformer, is set to enhance information accessibility within the Department of the Air Force (DAF).
Similar to openly accessible generative AI models such as ChatGPT, NIPRGPT provides conversational responses that resemble those of a person. This technology offers an advanced artificial intelligence solution to support numerous jobs inside the department and is a part of the continuous efforts to modernize the USAF and Space Force. Developed in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory, NIPRGPT is tailored for “Guardians,” Airmen, and civilian employees.
“Our recent GenAI Roundtables with industry and academia have shown us this is an actively growing field. Now is the time to give our Airmen and Guardians the flexibility to develop the necessary skills in parallel. Multiple modernization efforts are going on right now across the federal government and within the DAF to get tools in the hands of the workforce. This tool is another one of those efforts,” Venice Goodwine, DAF chief information officer, said.
The AI tool can assist with research, coding, and communication duties and function safely online. During a media roundtable, Chandra Donelson, the acting chief data and artificial intelligence officer for DAF, mentioned that NIPRGPT has already shown encouraging outcomes despite being in the early stages of development. She emphasized the tool’s potential by saying, “So first and foremost, I truly believe the greatest contributions and innovators can make is to create other innovators, and to see what guardians and airmen have done here with the NIPRGPT capability is phenomenal.”
Alexis Bonnell, AFRL chief information officer, stated, “NIPRGPT is a critical bridge to ensure we get the best tools we have into our team’s hands while larger commercial tools are navigating our intense security parameters and other processes. Changing how we interact with unstructured knowledge is not instant perfection; we must learn to use the tools, query, and get the best results. NIPRGPT will allow Airmen and Guardians to explore and build skills and familiarity as more powerful tools become available.”
The Air Force intends to work with commercial partners to assess if generative AI is required for the DAF, even though it hasn’t decided on a vendor or finalized its strategy for NIPRGPT. Bonnell added, “We’re hoping that not only will this kick off the curiosity and experimentation that we can see in our users, but it will also give us a way to test those providers with models. We fully expect that some models will be great at some use cases and not so great at others.”
The Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate’s Dark Sabre software platform is the foundation for NIPRGPT. The Air Force and Space Force are involved in the Dark Sabre project, which emphasizes developing next-generation, deployable software and capabilities.
