We have reached the point where humanity has asked AI to create new ‘life’ (depending on how you define a virus). The sheer volume of information that goes into understanding and recreating even fragments of life renders the task perfect for AI. AI assisted in the creation of 16 viruses. used generative AI models trained on millions of natural genomes to design entire bacteriophages (see the Perspective by Inglesby and Hanke). Instead of feeding safe data, they could train AI on the most dangerous viruses available.