AI Inventory
The October 30, 2023, Executive Order 14110, Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence required federal agencies to report on their use of AI by conducting an annual inventory of their AI use cases. This requirement was further explained through a March 28, 2024, OMB memorandum M-24-10, Advancing Governance, Innovation, and Risk Management for Agency Use of Artificial Intelligence, and an August 14, 2024, guidance document, Guidance for 2024 Agency Artificial Intelligence Reporting Per EO 14110.
The AI Use Case Inventory is a repository of the Department of Justice’s AI uses. It expands significantly on the 2023 inventory, providing more information about more use cases to enable innovation, efficiency, and the management of potential rights and safety impacts. The 2024 AI use case inventory includes 241 entries, a 1507% increase from 2023.
While an AI inventory is always a work in progress as new technologies are sought and others retired, the Department has taken a rigorous approach to data collection to ensure we can provide an unprecedented level of quality, comprehensiveness, and transparency. That work is ongoing—data calls and additional reporting are underway, and the Department is attuned to new use cases as they arise. Additional information about use cases, including risk mitigation strategies, will be forthcoming.
The inventory reflects information as reported by the components. All of the Department’s 42 components responded to the data call. To ensure accuracy, technical and non-technical leaders across the Department, including component heads, were involved in preparation of this inventory. Component representatives from the Department’s Emerging Technology Board (ETB) and an AI governance working group worked with the Chief AI Officer to review and consolidate component submissions and finalize this full DOJ inventory.
Notes about the inventory spreadsheet:
- Clustered Use Cases: Some entries have been clustered at the Department level. To be clustered in this way, the same commercial tool must be used by multiple components for the same purpose and only for that purpose.
- eLitigation Tools: The inventory has also consolidated reporting of eLitigation tools, which are widely used across the Department, with varying types of AI features, purposes and contexts. These tools are used in contexts that are rights-impacting, but the nature and details of AI uses vary, which may affect whether particular uses are rights-impacting. To address this and to harmonize approaches to governance for these tools, the Department has begun a process to develop a Department-wide governance policy for eLitigation uses of AI.
- LES Withholding: Some information was withheld due to law enforcement sensitivity. In these sensitive cases, DOJ has followed the FOIA standard in assessing information for release and has erred toward partial release rather than full withholding.
- Rights- or Safety-Impacting: M-24-10 categorizes certain AI uses as “rights impacting” or “safety impacting.” Certain enumerated use cases are presumptively rights- or safety-impacting. The Department has applied those presumptions and the definitions in M-24-10 in making these determinations, cognizant that as uses and policies change, we must reassess whether a given use case is rights- and/or safety-impacting. Those evaluations will continue on a rolling basis.