Convergence of generative AI and genetic engineering raises new concerns

Berlin and Brus­sels, 23 Jan­u­ary 2025 – A new report released today by Save Our Seeds high­lights the increas­ing use of gen­er­a­tive Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) in the devel­op­ment of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) plants, rais­ing sig­nif­i­cant new con­cerns about their safe­ty [1].

These devel­op­ments come at a time when the Euro­pean Union (EU) is con­sid­er­ing a far-reach­ing dereg­u­la­tion of GM plants engi­neered with gene-edit­ing tech­nolo­gies such as CRISPR-Cas [2]. Under draft EU rules, most gene-edit­ed plants would bypass exist­ing EU require­ments for GMO risk assess­ments, trace­abil­i­ty, and con­sumer labelling [3].

The pro­posed rules assume that devel­op­ers are mak­ing only small genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tions and that these changes could also be achieved through con­ven­tion­al breed­ing. These assump­tions have long been dis­put­ed [4]. With the rise of AI-dri­ven genet­ic engi­neer­ing, they have become even more ques­tion­able.

AI tech­nolo­gies now enable devel­op­ers to even cre­ate ‘new-to-nature’ pro­teins and organ­isms, which could pose pre­vi­ous­ly unknown risks.

If the EU moves for­ward with this dereg­u­la­tion, GM plants cre­at­ed by auto­mat­ed AI sys­tems could enter the mar­ket with­out detec­tion method, safe­ty test­ing or con­sumer labelling, expos­ing EU cit­i­zens and the envi­ron­ment to pre­vi­ous­ly unknown haz­ards.

Franziska Achter­berg, Head of Pol­i­cy and Advo­ca­cy at Save Our Seeds:

The con­ver­gence of these two tech­nolo­gies ampli­fies the weak­ness­es of gene edit­ing — such as unin­tend­ed side effects — by adding known short­com­ings of gen­er­a­tive AI, includ­ing the ‘black box’ effect, hal­lu­ci­na­tions, and data dis­tor­tions.

Achter­berg added:

Rather than dis­man­tling essen­tial safe­guards, the EU should estab­lish for­ward-think­ing GMO reg­u­la­tions that strength­en its over­sight and con­trol of genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered plants, address­ing the new chal­lenges aris­ing from these tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments.

Con­tact: Franziska Achter­berg, Head of Pol­i­cy and Advo­ca­cy at Save Our Seeds, +32 498 362403,

Save Our Seeds is a cam­paign run by the Foun­da­tion on Future Farm­ing. Since 2002, it has suc­cess­ful­ly spear­head­ed efforts to avoid GMO con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of seeds and main­tain pre­cau­tion­ary GMO leg­is­la­tion at nation­al and EU lev­els. Cur­rent cam­paigns also include efforts to Stop Gene Dri­ves.

Notes to Edi­tors:

[1] The report is pub­lished here

[2] The term ‘gene edit­ing’ (or ‘genome edit­ing’) is often used to refer to new genet­ic engi­neer­ing tech­niques that make it pos­si­ble to obtain new traits with­out adding any for­eign genet­ic mate­r­i­al. The most promi­nent tech­nique is CRISPR-Cas. Besides the intend­ed changes, gene edit­ing also caus­es unin­tend­ed genet­ic alter­ations that can affect the prod­ucts’ safe­ty for peo­ple and the envi­ron­ment. The long-term health and envi­ron­men­tal impact of GM crops engi­neered with gene edit­ing is yet untest­ed.

[3] Euro­pean Com­mis­sion pro­pos­al for a new reg­u­la­tion on plants pro­duced by cer­tain new genom­ic tech­niques, July 2023

[4] See for exam­ple, warn­ings by French food safe­ty agency ANSES, and Ger­man nature pro­tec­tion agency BfN

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