The White House has launched America.gov, a federal portal that puts an AI chatbot at the front of government services. Donald Trump announced the site in an executive order on Tuesday, describing it as a “unified digital front door to the Federal Government for every individual in the US seeking Federal information or services.”
The America.gov chatbot runs on two commercial models: Google‘s Gemini and xAI‘s Grok. Google confirmed its role in its own announcement, saying it is “leveraging Gemini to help more than 100 million people access critical public resources with greater speed and ease.” A White House spokesperson told The Register that xAI is the second technology partner.
What the executive order promises
The order says people should be able to communicate with the government in plain language and receive accurate answers. It also states that users will be able to complete transactions, “where authorized and technically available,” without visiting the websites of several agencies.
That goal is still some way off. The site lists tasks such as comparing medication costs, updating a legal name across multiple agencies and applying for a passport. Each of those links currently says the feature is coming sometime in 2027.
The launch version also has layout problems. The National Design Studio, which claims responsibility for the design, placed graphics inside the introductory text. One icon, modeled on the iOS fingerprint symbol, overlaps the words around it.
Meanwhile, the Office of Management and Budget has 90 days to tell federal agencies how to integrate with the portal. Until that work is done, the America.gov chatbot mainly answers questions and points people to other government pages.
How the America.gov chatbot handles your data
According to the White House, the chatbots draw their answers from 29,000 government websites that were ingested for the platform. The White House said it will add more features to the America.gov chatbot over time.
The privacy policy states that Google and xAI operate under zero data retention agreements. Under those terms, prompts sent to the America.gov chatbot and its responses are not kept, sold, turned into advertising profiles or used to train either company’s models.
The White House also told The Register that no user messages are sent to Gemini or Grok. However, the same privacy policy says the AI providers may receive approximate area information to make results more relevant. That clause does not fully match the White House’s statement.
Changes at the US Web Design System
The launch follows a leadership change at the US Web Design System (USWDS), the decade-old set of standards and components that helps federal, state and local websites meet accessibility requirements. FedScoop reported last week that the team’s leaders were removed. Ryan Parker, a self-described AI engineer from the Treasury Department, now runs the system.
Parker has said he plans to automate as much accessibility testing as possible across USWDS. In response, a group of current and former government web design leaders and USWDS contributors sent an open letter to the General Services Administration. FedScoop published the letter shortly before the America.gov announcement.
The signatories warned that the changes put the reliability of existing federal digital services at risk. Those services remain the main route for completing most government tasks online, since the America.gov transaction features are not scheduled to arrive until 2027.