CIA planning its own ChatGPT-style tool, weeks after its tech chief urged users to treat AI like their 'crazy, drunk friend'

• The CIA is preparing to roll out an AI-powered tool similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT.
• The program is set to be used by analysts to help with their research, Bloomberg reported.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is launching an AI-powered tool similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

The AI program is set to be used by analysts to give them better access to open-source intelligence and help their research, Bloomberg reported.

The tool will used across the 18-agency US intelligence community, including those run by branches of the military, per the report.

"We've gone from newspapers and radio, to newspapers and television, to newspapers and cable television, to basic internet, to big data, and it just keeps going," Randy Nixon, director of the CIA's Open-Source Enterprise division, told Bloomberg. "We have to find the needles in the needle field."

The tool will allow analysts to see the source of information and ask questions about what they are viewing, Nixon said.

"Then you can take it to the next level and start chatting and asking questions of the machines to give you answers, also sourced," he told the news outlet.

The move comes just weeks after the CIA's chief technology officer advised users to treat AI as "what I call the crazy drunk friend."

Nand Mulchandani, the agency's first CTO, made the comments at the Billing Cybersecurity Summit in Washington and were reported by Breaking Defense.

Mulchandani said that while AI programs can provide useful answers for pushing analysts out of "conceptual blindness," any information provided should be treated with appropriate suspicion.

He added the tech was "absolutely fantastic" when dealing with large amounts of data and looking for patterns, per Breaking Defense.

Representatives for the CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside normal working hours.