Spectre AI Incorporated was a private software company that served various government agencies and defense contractors in the early 2000s. The company is notable for having developed and deployed the first

functional presence engine A Functional Presence Engine, or FPE, is a probabilistic parsing mechanism that uses at least four components to respond to input patterns. It comprises a lexing system, a probabilistic fitness function, a knowledge base, and a library of functions ...

in 2001 (the system predated

SIRI Siri ( , backronym: Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface) is a digital assistant purchased, developed, and popularized by Apple Inc., which is included in the iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, Apple TV, audioOS, and visionOS operating sys ...

by six years). Spectre AI's initial contract with

Raytheon Raytheon is a business unit of RTX Corporation and is a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. Founded in 1922, it merged in 2020 with Unite ...

was the direct result of a request on the floor of the United States Congress on September 13, 2001, by Senators

Judd Gregg Judd Alan Gregg (born February 14, 1947) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 76th governor of New Hampshire from 1989 to 1993 and a United States senator from New Hampshire from 1993 to 2011 where he was Chairman of the Heal ...

and

Ernest Hollings Ernest Frederick "Fritz" Hollings (January 1, 1922April 6, 2019) was an American politician from the U.S. state of South Carolina. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1949 ...

. This was a surprising amount of access given the company was started one year earlier in

Spokane, Washington Spokane ( ) is the most populous city in eastern Washington and the county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It lies along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south o ...

. Spectre AI went on to create a suite of agent-based software products that were deployed for various government agencies and defense contractors. In late 2002 the company merged with Next-IT where it continued to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary. In 2004, the company revealed that it was working on public facing technology and developed the

US Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United Stat ...

's first AI recruiter, SGT STAR. The project later became controversial, and was the subject of numerous FOIA requests by the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties. It provides funds for legal defense in court, ...

over fears that the mechanism was overly invasive, which proved not to be the case.

History

Spectre AI Incorporated was founded by Philip Galland and Robert Hust. Galland, initially the company's primary investor, left his position at

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

to become the company's CEO. In 2004, He and cofounder Robert Hust (the inventor of the functional presence engine) went on to form Agent Science Technologies, Inc. Next IT subsequently merged with defense contractor

Verint Systems Verint Systems Inc. is a Melville, New York–based technology company that sells products and services for customer experience (CX) automation. The company offers an open platform, applications, and bots that incorporate artificial intelligence ...

. Spectre AI is no longer operational.

References

{{Reflist Former defense companies of the United States Software companies based in Washington (state) Artificial intelligence companies Companies based in Spokane, Washington