- US government departments are honoring Trump’s Anthropic ban
- The State Department has switched from Claude to ChatGPT
- Gemini, ChatGPT, and Copilot have all been approved for use in the US Senate
The US State Department has dropped Anthropic’s Claude model from use after President Donald Trump issued a directive ordering the immediate cessation of use.
Anthropic fell out of favor with the US government after recently refusing to allow Claude to be used for mass domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons systems. The Pentagon received two lawsuits from Anthropic after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dubbed the AI company a “supply chain risk” and terminated the $200 million contract.
Elsewhere in government, three AI models – Gemini, ChatGPT, and Copilot – have been approved for use within the US Senate, with the notable absence of Claude.
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State Department migrates to OpenAI
The State Department has chosen to switch from Claude Sonnet 4.5 to OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 as the backbone of its internal chatbot – but the switch has caused some teething problems. An internal document obtained by Nextgov/FCW states that the switchover from Claude to GPT means that data on the internal chatbot is only available as of May 2024.
A State Department spokesperson told Reuters, “In line with the president’s direction to cancel Anthropic contracts, we are taking immediate steps to implement the directive and bring our programs into full compliance.”
The US Department of Treasury and the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) are also dropping Claude from official use, with the HHS urging employees to use ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini instead.
Senate approves use of the big three
AI is only just being implemented for Senate use, with the chief information officer for the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms issuing a memo approving Google’s Gemini chat, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Microsoft Copilot for use.
Some senate platforms already have Copilot integrations, with data fed into Copilot being secured by the Senate’s existing secure Microsoft 365 Government environment. The memo added that Copilot can be used for “drafting and editing documents, summarizing information, preparing talking points and briefing material, and conducting research and analysis.”
Details on how Gemini and ChatGPT will be used are not yet available, and there are still questions to answer over how confidential information will be handled within the Senate’s AI ecosystem.
The New York Times notes that a House policy adopted in September 2024 prevents sensitive information from being entered into AI chatbots, but details on specific guidance have not been released.
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benedict.collins@futurenet.com (Benedict Collins)
