40-year-old mom welcomes first child with fully automated AI IVF system
A swaddled-in-yellow newborn boy in a dimly lit Guadalajara hospital bed emits a firm little cry. To most parents, it’s one of pure joy. To 40-year-old María(name changed for privacy), it’s something else: A living testament to science, to tenacity, and to the future of reproductive medicine.
He is the world’s first human to be created through this pioneering fertility treatment whereby an in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure is fully controlled by artificial intelligence.
This was not your typical IVF. The treatment that aided María in having her son used an automated AI system to replace one of the most delicate procedures in assisted reproductive technologies—injecting one sperm into an egg.
The New York-biotech firm Conceivable Life Sciences has created the tech, which sounds like a mouthful: Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection Automation, or ICSIA. In plain language, think along the lines of a teeny-tiny robot-surgeon with its own brain.
Traditionally, this procedure (referred to as ICSI) is performed by very experienced embryologists with steady hands and microscopes. Even the most skilled professionals can grow weary, be distracted, or make minute errors.
This is how the AI system operates: it begins by examining thousands of sperm samples under the microscope. It uses algorithms and patterns to identify the healthiest prospects—almost like an online dating service for sperm with greater consequences.
Next, it directs its tiny laser to immobilize the chosen sperm by zapping them with its tail, rendering them immovable but healthy. It becomes simpler to extract them. Last but not least, with surgical precision, it deposits the sperm into the middle of donated eggs without so much as a human touch on the controls.
And the kicker is this: the whole operation was performed remotely—from more than 3,700 kilometers away in New York.
That’s correct. The robot resided within a fertility clinic in Mexico, with its operators providing instructions from a lab in the United States to control the AI through each one of the 23 complicated steps in the ICSI procedure.
“Flying in through the keyhole from overseas,” is how chief engineer Prof. Gerardo Mendizabal-Ruiz described it.
María’s journey to motherhood wasn’t easy by any means. Following years of unsuccessful IVF cycles and heartbreak, doctors found that she could not conceive with healthy eggs. Donor eggs were the sole remaining recourse.
During this pilot trial, the AI system was used to fertilize five donor eggs. Four were effectively fertilized and one formed into what researchers refer to as a “blastocyst”—a vital stage early on in the developmental process.
That single, AI-assisted embryo was later transferred to María’s uterus. The result: a full-term, healthy baby boy. “That was our final attempt,” she stated, holding her son in her arms. “We never knew if it would be successful. But he’s all we have.”
Experts are referring to this as a landmark feat. Automating the most complicated portion of IVF provides the technology with consistency and potentially increased rates of success.
“We’ve put one of the most proficient procedures in reproductive medicine into the hand of a robot who’s not going to wear out, who won’t get distracted, who won’t shake.”
In pilot tests, the ICSIA robot equaled or surpassed conventional procedures. 13 out of 14 eggs that it implanted were fertilized. Some resulted in successful pregnancies and healthy births.
Joyce Harper, who is a professor of reproductive health at University College London, described the technology as “exciting” but added that more investigation is required. “Larger randomized studies will tell us if this actually improves outcomes,” she added.
And there is also the matter of expense. Currently, AI-assisted IVF is costly and experimental. But if developed and upscaled, potentially it could democratize fertility treatment—particularly in regions with little access to trained embryologists.
[Hypefresh]