The Trump administration launched a new government chatbot Tuesday that runs on artificial intelligence from Google's Gemini and Elon Musk's Grok, U.S. Chief Design Officer Joe Gebbia said.
The site, America.gov, went live around 10 a.m. ET. Gebbia announced the technology partners on CNBC's "Squawk Box" shortly before the launch.
"We have great partners behind the scenes," Gebbia said.
The chatbot is designed to answer user questions by scanning roughly 29,000 federal, state and local government websites and returning information drawn only from official sources, Gebbia said.
"You come to America.gov and you ask for what you need, and in a chat interface, we go off on the back end and scan across all those tens of thousands of websites to pull in any information that is specific to whatever your request is, and give you a personalized response that's only from official sources," he said.
Gebbia framed the project as a fix for a broken experience. "Every day, 40 million people interact with a government website trying to get something done. And I think we could all agree that we wish it was better," he told CNBC.
Google confirmed its role in a blog post published Tuesday morning. "Google is proud to be named a technology partner in this vital initiative, Gemini to help more than 100 million people access critical public resources with greater speed and ease," the company wrote. A Google spokesperson referred CNBC to the post.
Grok developer xAI, which SpaceX acquired and renamed SpaceXAI, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The launch puts two rival AI systems behind a single government service. Google and Musk's xAI compete directly in the chatbot market, and Musk has held a prominent role in the Trump administration. Pairing their technology on one federal platform is unusual.
The effort also raises questions about accuracy and accountability. Government agencies have issued conflicting guidance on AI use, and a chatbot that pulls from thousands of sources could surface outdated or incorrect information. Gebbia said responses come only from official sources, but the administration has not released details on how the system verifies answers or handles errors.
America.gov is the latest piece of the administration's push to overhaul federal digital services. Gebbia, a co-founder of Airbnb, joined the White House as chief design officer to lead that effort.
It is not clear how much the partnerships cost taxpayers or whether Google and SpaceXAI are providing the technology for free. Neither company disclosed financial terms.
