DeepMind watermarks AI-designed proteins for biosecurity
SynthID Bio hides a signature in a protein’s building blocks, and lab tests found marked designs worked as well as unmarked ones. It could help DNA makers tell designs from trusted AI tools apart from the rest.
Google DeepMind introduced SynthID Bio on September 30, a way to watermark proteins designed by AI without breaking them. In lab tests on three targets, watermarked protein binders matched unwatermarked ones on how often they worked, how tightly they bound and how varied they were, DeepMind says. It is sharing the code, lab data and model weights with researchers.