VA’s AI chatbots not designated high-impact, despite clinical use, watchdog says
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ByEdward Graham,
Managing Editor, Nextgov/FCW
June 12, 2026 01:44 PM ET
VA’s Inspector General noted that the agency’s two internal chatbots “are not designed specifically for clinical use,” although they have been deployed for such purposes.
The Department of Veterans Affairs failed to classify its generative artificial intelligence chatbots as high-impact use cases, despite clinicians using the tools for patient documentation purposes, according to a Thursday report from the agency’s Office of Inspector General.
VA currently allows its employees to use two Gen AI chatbots: VA GPT and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. While the watchdog noted that agency staff “demonstrated broad engagement with the use of AI chat tools,” it added that they “are not designed specifically for clinical use” and that VA “does not centrally curate or evaluate prompts, nor their generative output that could be applied to clinical decision-making.”
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