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Technology

Trump launches America.gov, an AI-powered front door for US federal services

The Trump administration launched America.gov, an AI chatbot drawing on Google's Gemini and Elon Musk's Grok and data from 29,000 government websites, as a single front door for federal services.

By Tom Ellery · · 3 min read

The Trump administration has unveiled America.gov, an artificial intelligence chatbot the White House is billing as a single front door for services from the federal government, launched at an event in Washington, DC, on Tuesday 29 September.

The site opens with a search bar inviting Americans to ask anything from booking a campsite at a national park, to getting a passport for their child, to replacing their Social Security card. “Whatever you need from the government, start here,” the homepage says, according to FedScoop, which covered the launch.

Joe Gebbia, the US Chief Design Officer and co-founder of Airbnb, told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday that the platform is powered by Google’s Gemini and Elon Musk’s Grok. “Under the hood, America.gov is an extraordinary use of AI designed to improve your life. It’s trained specifically on one official source of truth: The United States Government,” Gebbia said at the launch event, FedScoop reports.

The site draws on government-vetted data from roughly 29,000 government websites, with updates to those sites immediately available to the platform, Gebbia said.

Instead of searching through thousands of government websites, “you’ll now have one front door for every single question,” President Donald Trump said in remarks at the event, which was dubbed “Hello, America” and hosted by the National Design Studio at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, blocks from the White House.

Trump thanked Gebbia, Chief Brand Architect of the US Peter Arnell, and Edward Coristine — the DOGE engineer known as “Big Balls,” whom Trump described as the lead engineer on the project. Notably, Trump also thanked Musk, who founded the administration’s DOGE initiative before departing last year. Trump credited Musk as the person who “initially envisioned the transformation of government through technology and brought us the talent to get the job done.”

Musk and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang were expected on a panel discussion in the afternoon. Cabinet officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick attended, FedScoop reports.

Trump signed an executive order at the event — titled “Streamlining Access to Government Services Through America.gov” — establishing the platform as “the single point of entry for Americans to access covered services online,” and directing the head of the General Services Administration, the National Design Studio and the Office of Management and Budget director to integrate Login.gov with the platform, Healthcare IT News reports.

The version launched Tuesday allows users to ask questions and be directed to services, but Gebbia said “Phase 2” beginning in 2027 will allow users to complete processes on the platform itself and track progress. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr Mehmet Oz said Medicare beneficiaries would be able to pick a plan and enroll “in just a couple of months” without leaving the site, Healthcare IT News reports.

The executive order preserves in-person, telephone, mail and agency-specific digital routes to obtain federal services, and states the portal will not create a new data repository: Trump’s order preserves “each agency’s custody and control of its records, systems, statutory responsibilities and adjudicatory authority,” according to Healthcare IT News.

Privacy questions remain open. Gebbia said the website is “private by design,” but it was not immediately clear how the AI was procured and how user privacy will be protected, FedScoop reports. A privacy notice above the chat tells users to “share only what’s needed,” discloses that the tool may use approximate location, and states that “AI providers do not retain your prompts or responses.” The site “may cache responses for up to two hours, using a hash of the prompt rather than storing the prompt text.”

Sources

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