A Pentagon social media post promoting the military’s growing use of artificial intelligence has drawn attention after a photograph appeared to show an artificial intelligence (AI) agent being asked to help “create a war.”

The image was included in an X post by the Department of Defense Chief Technology Office highlighting a recent deployment of its GenAI Task Force at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii. According to the post, the team built more than 20 custom AI agents for sailors and helped automate tasks including operational reporting and briefing preparation.

One of the photos showed a laptop displaying a Google Gemini interface with a prompt that appeared to begin: “I NEED HELP BUILDING AN AGENT TO CREATE A WAR […]”

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The image caption identified the person using the system as U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Brandon Mizuhara, assigned to U.S. Pacific Fleet, and it was taken on July 21. The caption added that the task force is working to “systematically remove barriers to AI adoption to ensure a more lethal Department of War.” (Department of War is the Trump administration’s preferred name for the Department of Defense.)

The context of the message in the image was not immediately clear, and Newsweek was unable to verify the final word in the prompt. The Pentagon’s post emphasized the military’s efforts to integrate AI into operational environments, describing the technology as a tool to help warfighters act faster and improve decision-making.

Newsweek reached out to the Pentagon via email for comment.

An AI assistant interface with a prompt that appeared to read: "I NEED HELP BUILDING AN AGENT TO CREATE A WAR [...]"Pentagon Pushes AI Into Military Operations

The image comes as the Pentagon accelerates its use of AI across military, intelligence and administrative functions.

The Defense Department’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office says its mission is to speed up adoption of data, analytics and AI “from the boardroom to the battlefield” to give U.S. forces a decision advantage. Its listed priorities include advancing deterrence, reducing bureaucracy and helping create an “AI-first” warfighting force.

In January, the Department of Defense announced an AI Acceleration Strategy intended to expand military AI deployment across warfighting, intelligence and enterprise operations. The department said the strategy would support more than 3 million personnel and focus on seven “Pace-Setting Projects,” including AI-enabled battle management, simulation tools, intelligence-to-capability development and enterprise AI agents.

One of those projects, called Agent Network, is described by the department as an effort to “unleash” AI agent development and experimentation for battle management and decision support, ranging from campaign planning to “kill chain execution.” Another, GenAI.mil, is intended to provide department-wide access to frontier generative AI models, including Google’s Gemini and xAI’s Grok, for personnel at certain classification levels.

This is a developing story and will be updated.