Scientists have used artificial intelligence to create new viruses – a hopeful step toward medical advances that also raises serious concerns around potential misuse. Of the thousands of genomes that the AI generated, scientists built and tested about 300 in the lab and found that 16 were viable viruses. Much like Chat-GPT and other large language models, AI tool Evo was trained on large sets of existing text material. According to the research, the genetic library helped the AI “learn the evolutionary constraints” of natural genomes. “The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not.”