Sam Altman says OpenAI will tweak its Pentagon deal after surveillance backlash

• OpenAI said it revised Pentagon contract amid backlash over AI use concerns and surveillance fears.
• Sam Altman assured OpenAI's products won't be used for domestic surveillance or war intelligence.
• Protests erupted against OpenAI's Pentagon contract.

OpenAI said it is amending its contract with the Pentagon.

After public concerns that OpenAI's new deal with the Pentagon would allow the government to use its AI for mass surveillance, CEO Sam Altman posted an internal memo to X on Monday evening, saying that the company is working with the Pentagon to "make some additions in our agreement."

"Consistent with applicable laws, including the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, National Security Act of 1947, FISA Act of 1978, the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of US persons and nationals," Altman wrote on X.

"The Department also affirmed that our services will not be used by Department of War intelligence agencies (for example, the NSA). Any services to those agencies would require a follow-on modification to our contract," Altman added.

Altman's memo came after OpenAI struck a deal with the Pentagon on Friday to deploy its AI models on classified military networks. The contract stepped into a standoff between the Pentagon and Anthropic and happened just a day before the US struck Iran.

In his note, Altman said that he got things "wrong," saying the company should not have "rushed" to seal the deal.

"The issues are super complex, and demand clear communication," he said. "We were genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy."

Hours before the OpenAI deal was announced, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to halt use of Anthropic's Claude system, following a breakdown in talks over the military use of AI. Anthropic had specific red lines: explicit contractual bans on mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, which are systems capable of killing without human oversight.

As of Friday, nearly 500 OpenAI and Google employees signed on to an open letter in support of Anthropic's decision.

The OpenAI deal soon triggered backlash and concerns that OpenAI's tools would be used for domestic surveillance or for lethal autonomous weapons, claims which Altman immediately disputed. Protests took place in front of the OpenAI office in San Francisco and London, and QuitGPT, an advocacy group against OpenAI, has launched a boycott and organized a protest scheduled for Tuesday.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comments.