Scientists have used artificial intelligence to design viruses that exist nowhere in nature, and 16 of them turned out to be fully functional killers of bacteria. The work, published Thursday in the journal Science by a team at Stanford University and the Arc Institute in California, is the first time an AI model has written the complete instruction manual for a living thing rather than just one piece of it.

Scientists are worried about how smart DNA-trained artificial intelligence models could get—and that they could become a weapon in biological warfare.

Researchers say breakthrough offers hope for new medicines but also raises urgent biosecurity questions

The AI system makes genetically distant versions of a bacteria-killing virus.

The results have inspired equal parts hope and terror about the future of AI-inflected biology

New York Times: Scientists trained an AI model called Evo using libraries of DNA.