Skip to Content

DNA ID

Every year, fake credit cards or pirated products like CDs cost businesses billions of dollars, and some offenders have discovered how to forge the holograms that many companies stick on products to prevent counterfeiting. Taiwan-based Biowell Technology has developed a way to authenticate consumer products, using the stuff that makes every living being one of a kind: DNA. Each of Biowell’s millimeter-wide chips contains unique fragments of synthetic DNA. Manufacturers could embed the chips in their products; Biowell’s proprietary reader sends a current into the chip, which emits a distinct signal caused by its interaction with the DNA. Each product could be matched with a specific type of DNA, and signals from an embedded chip would tell whether a product was authentic. With the vast number of possible sequences, the DNA would be extremely difficult to replicate. Biowell launched the chip in August and will soon ship to its first customer: an undisclosed Brazilian bank.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.