The CIA Let AI Write Its First Intelligence Report—And AI 'Coworkers' Are Up Next

In brief

• CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis confirmed the agency produced its first-ever fully AI-generated intelligence report.
• Ellis outlined a roadmap for AI "coworkers" in analyst workflows—and within a decade, officers managing teams of AI agents.
• The disclosure came as the CIA distanced itself from Anthropic, whose tools the Trump administration has ordered federal agencies to phase out.

The CIA recently used AI to generate an intelligence report without a human analyst driving it. Deputy Director Michael Ellis confirmed the milestone Thursday at a Special Competitive Studies Project event, marking a shift from quiet experimentation to a public declaration of ambition.

Ellis said the agency ran more than 300 AI projects last year, Politico reports. Somewhere in that stack, a machine produced an intelligence product entirely on its own—a first in the agency's history.

The near-term roadmap is more incremental. Analysts would get AI "coworkers" embedded in agency analytics platforms to handle drafting, editing for clarity, and benchmarking outputs against tradecraft standards. Humans would still ultimately sign-off on the results. But the goal is speed—getting intelligence products out faster than a human-only pipeline allows.

Within a decade, Ellis said, CIA officers will manage teams of AI agents operating as "autonomous mission partners," a hybrid model that scales intelligence gathering in ways no human workforce can match alone.

The CIA has been building toward this for years. In 2023, the intelligence agency announced its own AI chatbot to help staffers parse surveillance data. By 2024, CIA Director Bill Burns and MI6 Chief Richard Moore jointly disclosed they were actively using generative AI for content triage, analyst support, and tracking how foreign adversaries deploy the technology. Ellis' remarks push that public timeline forward considerably.

Earlier this year, Anthropic declined to relax restrictions barring its tools from domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons applications. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded by designating Anthropic's products a "supply chain risk." President Trump then every federal agency to phase out Anthropic tools. The company has legally challenged the move.