Stanford researchers used generative AI to design working viruses from scratch, according to a peer-reviewed paper published in Science on Thursday. The team used AI models trained on DNA to write complete genomes for phages, viruses that kill bacteria, and 16 of the designs produced functioning viruses in the lab. A cocktail of the designed viruses wiped out E. coli strains that had grown resistant to the natural virus they were modeled on. Phage therapy is a decades-old alternative to antibiotics that has been limited by bacteria evolving resistance faster than new phages can be found in nature, so the ability to generate them with AI may have applications for treating drug-resistant infections.
The paper drew attention after its publication this week, with one genomics executive calling it “biology’s Wright Brothers moment”. However, it also caused alarm, with a paper in the same issue of Science that the paper was published in warning that the advent of AI-designed viruses “raises urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions. The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not.” And although the peer reviewed paper was just published, the research itself was not new; the findings were actually originally posted to bioRxiv in September 2025. Meanwhile, separate analysis of the designs found the model’s success “derives largely from staying close to previously observed sequences rather than exploring novel sequence space,” indicating that models have not yet demonstrated the ability to produce genomes that differ greatly from naturally occurring ones.
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