US State Department turns to AI for hiring panel support

The US State Department will use an artificial intelligence chatbot to help it select the people who will perform annual reviews of promotions and moves, according to a cable issued Monday and reviewed by Reuters.

The cable said that StateChat, an in-house chatbot which works using technology from Palantir and Microsoft, will be employed to pick foreign service officers for participation on the Foreign Service Selection Boards, the annual evaluation panels which decide whether and how to promote and shuffle around State Department employees.

In a statement, a department spokesperson said the evaluations themselves "will not be done by AI."

The boards, whose role is governed by the 1980 Foreign Service Act, play a critical role in the State Department's personnel promotion decisions, managing the annual process by which diplomats and others jump from one professional grade to the next. By statute, the boards are meant to include "a substantial number of women and members of minority groups."

The American Foreign Service Association, which represents State Department employees, did not directly comment on the use of AI but said it was seeking clarification from agency leadership about how it intends to comply with its legal obligations around women and minority group representation.

Palantir and Microsoft didn't immediately return messages.

Although the deployment of AI by officials precedes Trump's reelection in 2024, his administration has aggressively expanded its use since his return to power. Last month Reuters reported that tech tycoon Elon Musk’s US DOGE Service was expanding its use of the AI chatbot Grok across the US federal government.

In April, Reuters reported that Trump administration officials had told some US government employees that DOGE was using AI to monitor at least one federal agency’s communications for hostility to the president.