The US government has its first federal chief AI officer; Generative AI use is ‘escalating rapidly’ in federal agencies

There’s a new position in the U.S. government: Federal chief artificial intelligence officer. Gregory Barbaccia has begun to refer to himself as the Federal CAIO, in addition to his current role as the federal government’s chief information officer. A recent interview with CNBC referred to him this way and a federal official focused on AI confirmed to FedScoop that Barbaccia had used that title in a recent meeting. In a social media post last week, Barbaccia also used both titles. The new title comes amid the Trump administration’s continued focus on federal adoption of artificial intelligence. It follows the White House AI Action Plan, which was released last week and endorsed “transformative use of AI [that] can help deliver the highly responsive government the American people expect and deserve.” Still, the AI Action Plan makes no mention of a new position of CAIO for the whole federal government. Neither does the executive order that established the council or subsequent Office of Management and Budget actions. There was no federal CAIO in the Biden administration, and it’s not clear any formal action has been taken to establish the position. Federal agencies are increasingly turning to generative artificial intelligence to further their missions, according to a new watchdog report that found use cases of the emerging technology jumping by ninefold in a selection of nearly a dozen agencies last year. In a report published Tuesday, the Government Accountability Office said generative AI use cases across a group of 11 federal agencies increased from 32 to 282 cases from 2023 to 2024, per an analysis of those agencies’ inventories. The GAO laid out several ways these agencies harnessed generative AI last year, stating the technology can “improve written communications, information access efficiency, and program status tracking.” Examples included the Department of Veterans Affairs using automation for medical imaging processing in veterans’ diagnostic services, along with the Department of Health and Human Services’ initiative to extract information from publications regarding the containment of the poliovirus. HHS reported the largest jump out of the 11 agencies, going from seven generative AI use cases in 2023 to 116 in 2024, according to the report. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.