The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) now has more than 20 AI capabilities, with more planned, Chief Information Officer Deborah Stephens said, according to a FedScoop report.

Sharing the update at a September 23 webinar hosted by the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC), a nonprofit that connects government IT leaders with industry, Stephens said the tools are meant to speed up patent and trademark work.

“I liken AI to an expressway to problem solving, providing speed and depth that you could always accomplish as a human, but the AI allows you to get to that speed and depth more quickly,” Stephens said. “Our AI is rooted in the philosophy where the examiner leads, and AI is a supportive assistant.”

How USPTO Is Using the Tools

According to FedScoop, USPTO’s own large language model, called Scout, now has more than 7,000 daily and weekly users, while a separate AI plugin has summarized more than 100,000 patent applications for examiners so far. A new internal chatbot service portal has also been rolled out this month, according to the report. 

USPTO is also using AI in its call centers to handle both internal and external service issues.

“To help with its AI use, the USPTO has an enterprise adoption team, an AI hub, an AI academy and an AI governance council,” Stephens said. “The office is in the process of solidifying its AI strategy and will be releasing it, but in the meantime, they are looking at adoption metrics and usage all the time.” 

Migration to Cloud and AI 

According to FedScoop, Stephens said the office is currently 80% migrated to the cloud, with a goal of being fully cloud-based by June 2027. For her, cloud infrastructure and AI go hand in hand.

“It was essential to get to the cloud so we could use AI as that expressway” for “meeting mission capabilities,” she said. Even so, Stephens said quality standards won’t be relaxed for AI tools. “We are not going to cut any corners in that regard. We’re going to make sure that the AI is sound before we release it.”

Adoption at Scale Needs a Solid Foundation

For chief data officers (CDOs), USPTO’s approach is a useful reference point because it has paired more than 20 AI capabilities with an adoption team, a training academy, and governance structures. It has worked on building the structure to support scale.

It follows the principles behind broader AI governance work: scaling AI safely requires investing in oversight and training at the same pace as the tools themselves.