AI on the battlefield: US Army unveils combat chatbot for soldiers

The US army is developing its own AI-powered chatbot for soldiers in a bid to integrate artificial intelligence in the military chain of command and decisions.

Alex Miller, the Army’s chief technology officer, in an interview with Wired, unveiled a prototype of the system, named Victor, that combines a Reddit-like forum with a chatbot called “VictorBot.”

VictorBot can be helpful to the soldiers in various ways. For instance, by using the chatbot the soldiers can manage to configure electromagnetic warfare systems for a particular mission.

The model is trained on the information obtained from ongoing conflicts, especially from the Ukraine conflict.

When a user submits a technical query, VictorBot generates a response while citing specific posts and discussions from fellow service members.

“Electromagnetic warfare is such a hard topic. The chatbot can generate a response and cite all of the lessons learned from [different] units,” Miller said.

Project Victor is currently under development within the Combined Arms Command (CAC). According to Lieutenant Colonel Jon Nielsen, who is supervising this mission, during the different missions the soldiers commit the same mistakes and Victor will bridge that gap.

The ultimate motive of Victor is multimodality, allowing soldiers to upload video and images for analysis. “Victor will be one of the only sources with access to authoritative Army information,” Nielsen said.

According to Lauren Kahn, a senior research analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology and former Pentagon adviser, Victor holds immense potential to automate "back-office" military administrative tasks.

The recent project aligns with Pentagon’s broader goals regarding the integration of AI in the military. Last year, the defense department launched GenAI.mil to encourage AI adoption among employees.

When it comes to data, Miller said more than 500 repositories of data have been fed into the system, aiming to build accuracy in a similar way to commercial chatbots.

Could AI integration in the military be safe?

Some experts warned that integration of AI models in military-based missions could generate different kinds of problems.

Paul Scharre, executive president of the Center for New American Security and a former US Army Ranger, cautioned AI sycophantic tendencies as they can be highly problematic in the case of intelligence analysis.

Moreover, the agentic AI adds a new layer of security risks, thereby complicating the chain of commands in military operations.

The Pentagon's ambition to integrate and adopt AI on the battlefield is not new. Previously, the department used AI tools like Claude in recent operations , including the capture of Venezuela’s president and attack against Iran. However, this is the first time the Pentagon is building an AI tool on its own.