I'm not sure if it has changed, but things used to be called the same species if they can interbreed with each other and produce fertile offspring. Dog is wolf, yes; man is ape, no.
What you are describing is known as the Biological Species Concept. It's one of at least 28 species concepts that have been proposed in the scientific literature -- they were surveyed in a review paper whose reference irritatingly escapes me. Anyway, the BSC is not the only game in town (and is particularly useless to those, like me, who are palaeontologists.)
Selective pressure to modify the genome is the goal for altering organism's characteristics not unlike what happens naturally. So it is indirect gene editing. Now if the new organism is still the same species as you started with. I am not sure about that. There must be a test/definition for that. I think man descended from Ape and is homosapien.