Marine Corps announces new dates for generative AI workshop at Quantico
Marines, civilians and members of industry interested in attending the U.S. Marine Corps’ AI “workshop” at Quantico should mark their calendars for March 9-12, 2026, according to a new MARADMIN message released Monday.
The gathering was originally scheduled to take place last month, but it was postponed due to a lapse in appropriations associated with the federal government shutdown.
The Marine Corps’ Service Data Office is organizing the event, which will focus specifically on generative AI and agentic AI.
The term “agentic AI” has been added to the name of the event. The change was made “to reflect where the technology is heading,” Capt. Christopher Clark, AI lead at the SDO, wrote Monday in a post on LinkedIn about the event.
The aim of the conference is to better understand high-impact use cases for these types of capabilities across the service, provide an overview of joint and industry solutions, and “develop the USMC ‘North Star’ to maximize value for rapid USMC integration,” according to the message, which was approved for release by Lt. Gen. Melvin “Jerry” Carter, deputy commandant for information.
Generative AI tech can create things like code, text, images, audio and other media based on human prompts and previous learnings. That type of capability has become wildly popular in the commercial sector with the advent of new tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, xAI’s Grok, and others.
The Defense Department recently launched a new platform called GenAI.mil for military service members and DOD civilians. Google Cloud’s Gemini for Government products were the first to be introduced as part of the new system, and a suite of “frontier‑grade” capabilities offered by xAI for Government are expected to be added early next year. Pentagon leadership, including Secretary Pete Hegseth and CTO Emil Michael, have been strongly encouraging DOD personnel to use the platform.
The Pentagon is also keeping an eye on what potential adversaries are doing in this realm. In the department’s latest annual report to Congress on China’s military developments, officials noted Beijing’s progress with large language models.
“GenAI is advancing rapidly with broad applicability to augment Marines across the spectrum of functional areas and activities,” according to the new message about the Corps’ upcoming workshop at Quantico.
“Agentic AI is an emerging AI capability of systems that can autonomously pursue goals. These systems use GenAI models as their core reasoning engine, combined with memory and access to external tools, allowing AI agents to plan and execute complex, multi-step tasks to achieve a specific objective with minimal human intervention,” the message explained.
Earlier this year, the Marine Corps released its AI implementation plan. That guidance called for the deputy commandant for information, no later than March 2026, to “develop a use case process that captures, assesses, and prioritizes concepts for the application of AI from across the warfighting functions, and at all echelons, to implement targeted actions” as well as “identify major roadblocks in policy, workforce, and infrastructure that have a large impact on innovation and acceleration of AI implementation to mitigate through change.”
Commands participating in the upcoming workshop are being solicited to register Marines and civilians with demonstrated expertise in artificial intelligence and AI-related fields.
The new registration deadline is Feb. 1. All prior registrations for the conference have been retained, and resubmission isn’t required unless a change is desired, according to officials.
