Google AI used by Pentagon drone project in rare test

FILE - In this June 3, 2011, file photo, the Pentagon is seen from air from Air Force One. It’s the biggest budget the Pentagon has ever seen: $700 billion. That’s far more in defense spending than America’s two nearest competitors, China and Russia, and will mean the military can for the bill for thousands more troops, more training, more ships and a lot else. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

Google’s artificial intelligence technology is being used by the US Department of Defence to analyse drone footage, a rare and controversial move by a company that’s actively limited its work with the military in the past. 

A Google spokeswoman said the company provides its TensorFlow application programming interfaces, or APIs, to a pilot project with the Department of Defence to help automatically identify objects in unclassified data. APIs are software-based rules that let computer programs communicate. TensorFlow is a popular set of APIs and other tools for AI capabilities such as machine learning and computer vision.