Going ‘AI native’ with in-house ChatGPT the MITRE way

As a nonprofit R&D center for the US government, MITRE is no stranger to AI. Its researchers have long been working with IBM’s Watson AI technology, and so it would come as little surprise that — when OpenAI released ChatGPT based on GPT 3.5 in late November 2022 — MITRE would be among the first organizations looking to capitalize on the technology, launching MITREChatGPT a month later.

MITREChatGPT, a secure, internally developed version of Microsoft’s OpenAI GPT 4, stands out as the organization’s first major generative AI tool. Released in May 2023, the project — which garnered MITRE a 2024 CIO 100 Award for IT leadership and innovation — is integrated with MITRE’s 65-year-old knowledge base and tools, and has been put into production by more than 60% of its 10,000-strong workforce.

The tool, which complements the R&D’s close partnership with Microsoft, has been enhanced to fulfill requests for information from six federally funded US agencies, including the Department of Defense, Federal Aviation Administration, and Department of Homeland Security. And it enables research teams to analyze legislation and policy documents in record time, delivering plans for proposed changes to these critical agencies in a day rather than weeks.