U.S. Government’s New AI Chatbot Hides a Strange Minecraft Easter Egg
Ask the U.S. government’s newly launched AI chatbot about Minecraft, and the response suddenly sounds less like a government help desk and more like an existential monologue.
The chatbot is hosted on America.gov, which launched on Tuesday. FedScoop reported that the platform brings together information from roughly 29,000 government websites, allowing users to ask about services such as booking a campsite, obtaining a passport, or replacing a Social Security card.
But when Minecraft comes up, TechCrunch’s Amanda Silberling discovered that the chatbot produces a monologue of roughly 1,800 words. Although the response can initially look like an AI meltdown, that is not what is happening.
The text is a rewritten version of the Minecraft “End Poem,” written by Irish author Julian Gough. The game displays the poem after players defeat the Ender Dragon and enter the exit portal.
The government chatbot’s version preserves the structure of the original while replacing its cosmic themes with government paperwork. In the excerpt published by TechCrunch, the poem’s well-known line about love is transformed into a line concerning a ZIP code.
That makes the response an easter egg rather than a hallucination. So far, however, nobody has publicly identified who added it.
The incident comes as the White House has repeatedly used cartoons and video games in political messaging, while rights holders who have publicly addressed some of those uses have said they did not authorize them.
In March, the White House posted Pikachu artwork from the game Pokémon Pokopia alongside “Make America Great Again” text. The Pokémon Company said it was not involved and that no permission had been granted. White House videos about the Iran strikes also incorporated footage from Yu-Gi-Oh! and Dragon Ball, and the official Yu-Gi-Oh! X account said that nobody associated with the manga or anime had been involved.
Steve Downes, the voice actor for Halo’s Master Chief, called on the White House to remove his voice from a strike video, describing it as “disgusting and juvenile war porn.” After Trump posted an AI-generated video of himself as Naruto on Truth Social in June, Japan’s economic security minister, Kimi Onoda, warned that misuse could damage a work’s image, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
A fan petition opposing the practice has collected roughly 24,000 signatures. Bandai Namco and Studio Pierrot did not comment, and no response from a manga creator has been reported.
According to CNBC, the platform is powered by Google’s Gemini and Elon Musk’s Grok. Edward Coristine, the 20-year-old DOGE alum known by the nickname “Big Balls,” served as a lead engineer on the project.
For now, the site primarily directs users to government services. Plans call for people to be able to continue processes directly on the platform and track their progress next year.