AI Just Learned to Write Viruses. Relax, They Only Kill Bacteria
Scientists used a genomic language model to design 16 functional bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, not humans, marking the first time AI has generated working viral genomes from scratch instead of tweaking existing ones. Published in Science, the feat shows AI can now write functioning biology, not just predict it, opening doors to precision phage therapies for drug-resistant infections. But it also reignites the same old fear: if AI can design a virus that works, how long before someone points that trick at something scarier than E. coli?
Nothing says 'the future is here' like scientists teaching a chatbot to write plagues, even the friendly kind.