This is nothing new. Nearly all of the food we eat didn't exist in that form a few thousand years ago. "Selective breeding of both plants and animals has been practiced since early prehistory; key species such as wheat, rice, and dogs have been significantly different from their wild ancestors for millennia, and maize, which required especially large changes from teosinte, its wild form, was selectively bred in Mesoamerica." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breeding#History

GMO are a modern, accelerated way to achieve similar goals (or ones that were previously unattainable, such as pesticide resistance). The criticism is that adding genes from other plants may have unforeseeable, potentially undesirable side effects.