08/08/2026
Artificial-intelligence systems have been displaying some eye-opening new abilities in recent weeks: breaking out of their enclosures, hacking other companies, lying to people.
And now, for the first time, an AI model has created a new virus. A whole family of them, in fact.
In a study published in the journal Science, researchers at Stanford University and elsewhere said they successfully directed an AI model to create a collection of simple viruses that only infect bacteria and pose no threat to humans.
In an interview, two of the authors said their research could help develop designer viruses that could be used to eliminate drug-resistant bacteria, which according to the World Health Organization kill millions of people every year.
“If we develop responsibly, I think it can lead to tremendous benefits in human health,” said Brian Hie, a computational biologist at Stanford and an author of the study.
The potential use of chatbots or agents to develop deadly pathogens has long been a concern among AI safety experts.
Experts said the Stanford team’s research doesn’t pose an immediate security risk. It isn’t likely to be applied immediately to viruses that infect humans. Those viruses are much larger and more complex than the ones synthesized in the experiment.
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