As DeepSeek rattles the tech industry, OpenAI is charging ahead with a new product release: ChatGPT Gov.
On Tuesday, OpenAI announced a "tailored" ChatGPT version for government agencies with enhanced cybersecurity frameworks that can be deployed on Microsoft Azure's government cloud servers or Azure commercial.
"Self-hosting ChatGPT Gov enables agencies to more easily manage their own security, privacy, and compliance requirements," the announcement states. Additionally, OpenAI believes "this infrastructure will expedite internal authorization of OpenAI’s tools for the handling of non-public sensitive data."
The timing of OpenAI's announcement coincides with the wave of DeepSeek news that has challenged OpenAI's position as the dominant AI force. Last week, the Chinese company released its DeepSeek R1 model that is just as good as ChatGPT, free to use as a web app, and has an API that's significantly cheaper to use. Then there's the claim that it cost DeepSeek $6 million to train its model, compared to OpenAI's $100 million, a cost efficiency that's making Wall Street question how much money is needed to scale AI.
DeepSeek represents a threat to the U.S.'s current market dominance in the AI space, but also national security. Much like the concerns about TikTok, the China-based ChatGPT competitor raises questions about the how the U.S. government will respond to the LLM which stores its data locally on Chinese servers, potentially exposing it to the Chinese government.
From a tactical standpoint, OpenAI seems to be positioning itself as a safe and secure ally to take on Chinese threats.
Whether the ChatGPT Gov announcement was pre-planned or prompted by the DeepSeek mania is unclear. But OpenAI CEO Sam Altman remains unfazed — at least publicly. "Deepseek's R1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they're able to deliver for the price," said Altman in an X post on Monday. "We will obviously deliver much better models and also it's legit invigorating to have a new competitor! We will pull up some releases."
ChatGPT Gov has many of the same features as ChatGPT Enterprise, including GPT-4o access, the ability to save and share conversations internally, custom GPT builds, and an "administrative console" for IT teams for more customization.
