Inside Ask Janes: Bringing AI-Powered Intelligence Discovery to Defence Users

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how defence and intelligence professionals interact with information. Yet in mission-critical environments, speed alone is not enough. Insights must also be validated, transparent, and grounded in authoritative sources. To help customers access defence intelligence more quickly and intuitively, Janes recently launched Ask Janes, an AI-powered query capability built on Janes authoritative data and analysis. In this Q&A, Maria Cornett, Chief Product Officer at Janes, discusses why Ask Janes was developed, how it differs from general-purpose AI tools, the role customer feedback has played in its evolution, and what the future of AI-enabled defence intelligence could look like.

For readers who may be hearing about it for the first time, what is Ask Janes and why did Janes create it?

Maria Cornett: Ask Janes is an AI-powered query capability that combines advanced AI with Janes validated defence intelligence, enabling users to discover, compare, summarize, and better understand complex information in seconds.

We created it in response to a clear customer need: getting to information faster. Whether through search, alerts, saved searches, or now Ask Janes, our focus has always been on reducing the time between a question and a validated answer, and helping our customers discover deeper, richer information.

As AI-powered search and query tools become a standard part of how people interact with information, we saw an opportunity to combine the latest technology with Janes deep defence expertise and authoritative data. The result is a faster, more intuitive way to access Janes intelligence while maintaining the rigor and assurance our customers expect.

Every organization is exploring AI today. What makes Ask Janes different from general-purpose AI tools?

Maria Cornett: The biggest difference is that Ask Janes is grounded in Janes validated intelligence, which has gone through our rigorous tradecraft process.

General-purpose AI tools pull information from across the internet, where sources can vary significantly in quality, reliability, and provenance. Ask Janes operates exclusively on Janes authoritative defence intelligence, allowing users to access trusted information without having to validate multiple sources.

We've conducted extensive testing against widely available AI platforms. In one comparison, we used the same prompt across Ask Janes and several general-purpose AI tools to analyse the Su-35 fighter aircraft. Ask Janes consistently produced more complete, accurate, and relevant responses. Many other tools relied heavily on publicly available sources, including Wikipedia, and often omitted important context or details.

In an environment where misinformation and disinformation are growing concerns, source credibility matters. Ask Janes combines the speed of modern AI with the depth, rigor, and assurance of Janes intelligence, giving customers a faster path to validated answers.

How does Ask Janes enhance the customer experience and help users get more value from Janes intelligence?

Maria Cornett: At its core, Ask Janes helps customers get from question to answer faster, but it also aids analysis. What has been particularly exciting is how it enables users to interact with Janes intelligence in ways that previously required manual research or dedicated functionality.

Equipment comparison is a good example. Customers often need to evaluate aircraft, vessels, vehicles, or other systems side by side. With Ask Janes, they can ask a comparison question and receive a comprehensive analysis in seconds. We've seen similar benefits for specification-driven research, where users can quickly identify highly specific technical information without navigating multiple records or datasets.

Ask Janes also gives us the flexibility to rapidly introduce new capabilities based on customer needs. We're currently testing multilingual querying, allowing users to ask questions and receive responses in languages such as Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Japanese.

Ultimately, Ask Janes makes  our intelligence easier to access, explore, and apply to real-world decisions.

How can customers integrate Ask Janes into their daily workflows, and what are some of the most impactful use cases you've seen so far?

Maria Cornett: One of the strengths of Ask Janes is its flexibility. Customers can use it to answer a simple question in seconds or accelerate more complex research and analytical workflows.

We've seen strong adoption among users who need to quickly understand emerging situations, identify relevant developments, or gather supporting information for reports and assessments. For example, an analyst might ask, "What are the latest developments in the United States-Iran conflict?" Ask Janes can rapidly surface relevant intelligence, summarize key developments, and provide access to the underlying reporting.

Another important benefit is context discovery. Ask Janes can uncover related reporting, patterns, and developments across a broader time horizon, helping users identify information they may not have otherwise found.

The result is less time spent searching and more time focused on analysis, insight generation, and decision-making.

Customer feedback has played a key role in shaping Ask Janes. What have you learned from beta users, and how is that feedback influencing future development?

Maria Cornett: Customer feedback has been instrumental in shaping Ask Janes from day one. As tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini continue to change how people interact with information, customers increasingly expect faster and more intuitive ways to access intelligence.

That feedback helped us refine the Ask Janes experience, including introducing recommended questions and providing clearer guidance around the types of queries the platform is best positioned to answer.

It also reinforced the importance of transparency. Ask Janes is highly effective at helping users discover, retrieve, compare, summarise, and analyse information contained within Janes intelligence. However, some operational or analytical questions require additional data sources beyond the Janes ecosystem. In those situations, we enable Janes data to be used in customers dedicated information systems and power their own AI tools.

Customer feedback has also helped us identify opportunities for additional tooling, model refinement, and data enhancements. In many ways, Ask Janes has become a testing ground for understanding how customers want to interact with defence intelligence in an AI-driven environment, helping us improve both the user experience and the underlying data.

Looking ahead, how do you see Ask Janes evolving, and what excites you most about its future potential for the defence and intelligence communities?

Maria Cornett: What excites me most is that we're still at the beginning of what's possible.

One area I see evolving significantly is giving users the ability to refine searches, ask follow-up questions, and explore topics more deeply within the context of a single search. Not as a general-purpose chatbot, but as a more intelligent search assistant for defence and security questions.

I also see Ask Janes becoming more deeply embedded throughout the platform. Whether a user is viewing an equipment record, exploring country intelligence, or analysing activity on a map, Ask Janes could provide contextual insights without requiring them to leave their workflow.

We're also expanding accessibility through multilingual capabilities, helping customers engage with Janes intelligence in the language they're most comfortable using.

More broadly, I want Ask Janes to become a natural starting point whenever customers need context on a developing situation. At the same time, Ask Janes is only one part of a larger AI story. The capability works because it is built on validated, structured, AI-ready defence intelligence that can also support customers' own AI environments and analytical workflows.

Ultimately, the future isn't just about making search better. It's about helping the defence and intelligence community access validated information faster, generate insight more efficiently, and make better-informed decisions in an increasingly complex world.

Book a personalized Ask Janes demo to see how the capability can support your mission, research, and analytical workflows using the authoritative intelligence and expertise that underpin Janes.