Scientists have used artificial intelligence to create functional viruses that have never existed in nature, a scientific milestone that could accelerate treatments for antibiotic-resistant infections while raising fresh concerns over how governments regulate increasingly powerful AI tools used in biotechnology.
The research, led by scientists at Stanford University and published Thursday in the journal Science, used a genome language model to generate synthetic bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria rather than humans or animals. After producing hundreds of AI-generated genome designs, researchers synthesized the most promising candidates in the laboratory and found that 16 successfully infected and destroyed Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria.
