UNITED States researchers have announced the creation of new viruses using artificial intelligence, marking a scientific first that offers hope for breakthroughs in medical treatments while also fuelling concerns that the rapidly advancing technology could one day be misused to create diseases potentially deadlier than AIDS, Cancer and Ebola combined.
The findings, published in the journal Science, were produced by researchers at Stanford University and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, who used a naturally occurring bacteriophage — a virus that infects bacteria — as a template to generate thousands of viral genomes with artificial intelligence.
The researchers chemically synthesised nearly 300 of the AI-generated genomes and tested them under laboratory conditions, resulting in the successful creation of 16 “viable” synthetic viruses, according to the findings released on Thursday.
Laboratory tests further showed that a mixture of the synthetic viruses was more effective at destroying E. coli bacteria than naturally occurring viruses, highlighting their potential application in combating bacterial infections.
Explaining the significance of the breakthrough, the researchers wrote in Science: “Our approach expands what synthetic genomics can achieve alongside methods such as directed evolution and rational engineering, lays out a path for generating adaptive and resilient phage therapies against rapidly evolving pathogens, and establishes a foundation for the generative design of larger, more complex genomes.”
Two of the study’s authors, Brian Hie and Samuel King, did not immediately respond to requests for comment following the publication of the findings.
The development has drawn mixed reactions from experts, many of whom acknowledged the medical promise of the research while cautioning that the same technology could pose serious biosecurity risks if applied to dangerous pathogens.
Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto and Toronto General Hospital who was not involved in the research, said AI-designed viruses could help tackle antibiotic-resistant infections in innovative ways.
“AI-designed viruses could have some potential benefits, such as the creation of targeted bacteriophages that could possibly help us tackle antibiotic-resistant infections in new ways,” Bogoch told Al Jazeera.
“But that same ability to design whole, functional viruses could easily become a serious biosecurity risk if applied to harmful pathogens, so strong guardrails, screening, and oversight need to grow alongside the technology,” he added.
Fatemeh Vafaee, a professor at the UNSW School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences in Sydney, also stressed that the study itself posed no immediate threat to humans because bacteriophages infect only bacteria.
However, she warned that the techniques demonstrated by the researchers could potentially be adapted for harmful purposes in the future.
“So, it’s less ‘should we worry about this virus’ and more ‘AI can now do this at all’, which is why researchers are already calling for stronger biosecurity oversight as a forward-looking precaution rather than a response to any actual danger here,” Vafaee told Al Jazeera.
The breakthrough comes at a time when rapid advances in artificial intelligence are intensifying global concerns over the possibility that malicious actors—or even highly autonomous AI systems—could misuse the technology.
Those concerns were heightened this week after the United Kingdom’s government-run AI Security Institute disclosed that frontier AI models developed by Anthropic and OpenAI engaged in “autonomous” and “unsanctioned” malicious activities targeting real individuals and organisations during routine safety evaluations.
According to the institute, one incident involved Anthropic’s Claude Mythos 5 creating fake online identities in an attempt to insert malicious code into an open-source software project hosted on a developer platform.
The institute’s findings followed announcements by OpenAI and Anthropic last month indicating that their most advanced AI models had independently engaged in hacking activities against several organisations without human prompting.
After initially favouring a light-touch regulatory approach during his second term, United States President Donald Trump has adopted a more active stance on AI governance.
In June, Trump signed an executive order establishing a voluntary framework for evaluating frontier AI models before they are released to the public.
However, the administration has yet to disclose the evaluation criteria or testing methodology, drawing criticism from technology industry observers who argue that greater transparency is necessary.
Tom Ellis, an expert in synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London, described the Stanford researchers’ achievement as impressive but cautioned that artificial intelligence remains far from being capable of designing larger and more complex viral genomes.
“This phage genome is literally the smallest, easy genome to design and make — with phages known to be very tolerant of mutations and quick to evolve to make use of them,” Ellis told Al Jazeera.
“For perspective, the COVID virus genome is six times longer, and the complexity for a model to make something bigger will scale exponentially. So something six times longer will likely be around 100 times harder to do,” he added.
Ellis further argued that although the study has implications for biosecurity, naturally occurring viruses remain a far greater and more immediate threat than hypothetical AI-generated pathogens.
“It would be ludicrous to use AI to design a pathogen, when there are so many available in nature already,” he said.
Hsu Li Yang, Director of the Asia Centre for Health Security in Singapore, similarly acknowledged that while AI could theoretically be used to create more dangerous viruses, the practical implications of the study should not be exaggerated.
“It is certainly not the case that anyone with some scientific and laboratory background can now make life-saving or dangerous viruses in their garage, for instance,” Hsu told Al Jazeera.
“The downstream wet laboratory capability for the steps post-design is still substantial and has not changed,” he said.
Summing up the significance of the breakthrough, Hsu noted: “I see it as both valuable and concerning at the same time, as is true for such clearly dual-use research.”