AI in December (2025)
Written by Emily Wolfteich
Senior Industry Analyst
The House AI Task Force released its first bipartisan report.
The report’s key recommendations focus on seven specific areas:
- Identifying AI issue novelty
- Promoting AI innovation
- Protecting against AI risks and harms
- Empowering government with AI
- Affirming the use of a sector-specific regulatory structure
- Taking an incremental approach
- Keeping humans at the center of AI policy discussions.
The report outlines a bipartisan Congressional vision for AI in the government and in the country, indicating (at least for now) areas of common interest between Democrats and Republicans. The recommendations within the report focus on keeping any AI regulations industry-friendly, and tailors approaches to specific sectors.
DHS launched an internal chatbot to support its workforce.
The AI-powered tool, known as DHSChat, was internally developed using underlying software similar to commercially available tools like ChatGPT, and operates in a closed environment to leverage non-public data. Director of DHS AI Corps wrote in a blog post that DHSChat will help its 19,000 employees in “summarizing complex documents and reports, generating computer code, and streamlining repetitive tasks like data entry.”
DHS has been allowing its employees to leverage tools like ChatGPT and Claude since 2023. The development of this internal tool suggest that these generative tools have been helpful for the agency’s productivity, indicating that the agency may continue to invest in AI tools as workforce support. It also suggests that we may see other federal agencies internally develop these tools (HHS is developing similar tools).
The White House released its annual inventory of over 1,700 AI use cases in the federal government.
The list, which is mandated by a 2020 Trump-era executive order, consolidates individual agency AI use cases, and has more than doubled from the 710 reported last year. The repositories include current use cases as well as those that are both upcoming and retired. This is also the first year that OMB has released the inventory on the code repository GitHub, allowing for improved cross-collaboration.
This year’s inventory required more disclosures and refinement of agency reports, including analyzing potential rights or safety impacts. This inventory found 227 rights and safety-impacting use cases, primarily within the VA. If a use case falls under this category, additional risk management is required; if the use case cannot meet these requirements, it must be paused. It is unclear whether this expanded practice, instituted under the Biden administration, will continue. The Department of Health and Human Services saw the largest increase in AI use cases, up 66% from 2023 to 271. DHS also reported a 136% increase in use cases, including 29 current and 10 upcoming rights- or safety-impacting.
To read additional thought leadership from Emily, connect with her on LinkedIn.
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