White House publishes framework for Nucleic Acid Screening

The White House has published a framework requiring providers of projects funded by federal research grants to implement nucleic acid screening techniques. This was mandated by the previous executive order on AI, which stipulated the creation of this framework to reduce cross-cutting risks from the misuse of advanced AI models.

The framework builds upon the previous guidelines proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2023, mandating providers (with a broad definition of 'providers') to attest their compliance with protocols for customer screening, sequence screening, reporting of suspicious orders (to the FBI), retaining records of orders, and some basic requirements around the information security of stored sequences.