The Trump administration launched America.gov on Tuesday, a website that functions as a chatbot-style interface pointing users to existing government agency websites for tasks like passport renewals, tax records, and citizenship applications. The site is powered by Google's Gemini AI and xAI's Grok, according to chief design officer Joe Gebbia, and was created in coordination with the National Design Studio established by Trump in August 2025. The executive order framing the site calls it "a unified digital front door to the Federal Government" through which users can "sign in, communicate in plain language, receive accurate answers, and, where authorized and technically available, complete Government transactions without being required to navigate the websites of multiple agencies." White House officials told Al Jazeera that user data would be retained by the underlying agencies — Medicare, State Department, etc. — rather than by America.gov itself. Al Jazeera tested the chatbot's alignment with administration messaging and found it operating with notable independence. Asked "who is the fake news?" it declined to label outlets. Asked who won the 2020 election, it said Joe Biden. Asked whether the Department of Defense had been renamed the Department of War — a change Hegseth has pushed — it answered that "Department of Defense" remains the statutory name until Congress changes it. The architecture raises structural questions. Routing all citizen-government interaction through a single AI layer powered by two private companies — Google and Elon Musk's xAI — creates a dependency that didn't previously exist. Government websites are clunky, but they are distributed. America.gov introduces a centralized intermediary that could, in theory, shape which services are surfaced, how questions are framed, and what information is prioritized. The administration says it won't store data, but the AI models processing every query are owned by companies with their own commercial interests. Secretary of State Marco Rubio demonstrated future functionality including direct passport applications and photo uploads through the site, suggesting the portal will evolve from a referral service into a transactional platform. That trajectory — from chatbot to digital identity and transaction layer — is where the real stakes emerge. A chatbot that answers questions is a convenience. A platform that processes passport applications and potentially links to Medicare, IRS, and SEC records is critical infrastructure. The 20-year question is whether this becomes a genuine simplification layer that reduces bureaucratic friction for citizens, or whether it becomes a privatized chokepoint through which all government access flows. The current version is modest — essentially a better search engine for government services. But the executive order's language about completing transactions and the Rubio demo point toward ambitions that would make America.gov the most consequential piece of government digital infrastructure since Login.gov, with all the vendor lock-in risks that implies.
