Andrew Howley

Jul 13, 2026 at 8:05 AM

Hi Paul, there are defintely ways that AI can help the biomimicry process. From an entry level, something we've focused on at AskNature is to use AI to make biological research more easily discoverable and translated into accessible language. We built a custom GPT at [asknature.org/chat](https://asknature.org/chat) that does that, while providing source links for the information used. So students (or anyone) can go in with very open-ended questions and make rapid progress in orienting themselves to possible solutions, and then jump off into original research to go further. Or also, to keep using the AI, but using it to explore and dig deeper. I think the biggest key, and one we talk about internally and when presenting this externally, is that AI is a tool. It's not intelligent and it's not magic. If you take the first answer it gives you, it's the same as taking the first answer from a stranger off the street or a new intern or a new student or anyone. Even if you were interviewing the world's greatst expert on a subject, you wouldn't stop with the first answer they gave you. You'd ask follow-ups, and dig deeper. That's the way to think of natural language generative AI as well. The quality of what you get out depends on the quality of what you put in. We put a lot of effort into getting AskNature Chat to be good out of the gate, but it's still best thought of as that--a gate. It's a tool to get you started and then the genius is where you'll go from there. Have a look at let me know what you think and how it goes!