America.gov is live. Sort of.
Top Trump officials and leaders from major tech companies gathered in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to unveil an AI-driven government website some in the administration hope could offer Republicans a selling point ahead of the midterms.
Americans will be able to use the website as a clearinghouse to apply for a passport, enroll in Medicare and look at government jobs — eventually. Services like these won’t be functional until 2027. Until then, the website’s main feature is an AI chatbot that looks similar to those offered by Google or Anthropic.
The project, first reported by The Washington Sun, was created by several former members of DOGE, now working at the White House’s National Design Studio. Joe Gebbia, a co-founder of Airbnb and a former member of DOGE — the controversial group that worked to consolidate government data and pushed government workers out of their jobs — leads the team.
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President Donald Trump called the release of the website “one of the most revolutionary product launches of all time” on Tuesday in an auditorium filled with top Cabinet officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Elon Musk, who spearheaded DOGE, and NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang are scheduled to speak later in the day.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were also among the top officials in attendance.
“With America.gov, the federal government no longer stands in your way, it stands only at your service,” Trump said.
Gebbia said America.gov is meant to streamline thousands of government websites, giving Americans access to a one-stop AI shop. An FAQ included on the website says that it relies on official government sources, but encourages users to double-check its answers. The website’s terms caution that the information it gives can be “incomplete” or “wrong.”
The chatbot is operating on a “couple” AI systems, Oz told reporters, citing xAI’s Grok and OpenAI.
Gebbia said the chatbot feature would be “private by design,” and would not save conversations.
“There’s a topic that unites everyone, men and women alike, young and old, across the political spectrum: Government websites are a nightmare,” Gebbia said.
Trump administration officials had previously discussed offering tax-filing services through the website, which The Sun reported earlier this month. But ultimately, that feature was left out: Trump’s executive order underpinning the website explicitly ruled out tax filing as a feature, at least for now.
Offering free tax-filing services would’ve been a major policy reversal for the Trump administration, which canceled a Biden-era program that allowed some Americans to file their taxes for free on a government website called Direct File.
The order, however, does require federal agencies to integrate their public-facing federal services with the new website.
Trump characterized the site as part of the administration’s work to “fix” the government — in this case, its “terrible” websites and long forms — and to give Americans back the time they spend navigating them by using AI, which he called “superintelligence.” The president also thanked Musk, calling him “the man who initially envisioned the transformation of government through technology and brought us the talent to get the job done.”
Edward Coristine, a former DOGE employee who goes by the nickname “Big Balls,” worked on the website and joined Trump and Cabinet members onstage when the president signed the executive order.
Some administration officials previously told The Sun that the White House hoped that an end-of-September launch would help Republicans drive home the message that the Trump administration was delivering. However, it’s unclear how much the site will resonate with Americans, given much of its functionality won’t roll out until next year.
Trump also used the launch to press for the passage of the SAVE America Act, saying “with this, nobody can any longer complain about providing proof of citizenship or voter ID,” he said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the audience that the site would “rebuild” the process of getting a passport “from the ground up,” allowing Americans to fill out the entire application, upload a photo and make a payment on the site after logging into the government’s identity proofing website, called Login.gov. America.gov isn’t currently integrated with Login.gov.
“No drugstore hostage photo,” he quipped. Rubio also revealed the design for a 2028 passport, with a larger eagle and “more gold.”
The new passports, he said, would arrive in a special white box that resembles iPhone packaging.
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