Can AI Create Life? Meet the Researcher Designing Virus Blueprints

2026-10-09 · MIT Tech Review AI · Original

Could artificial intelligence one day create new forms of life? A 2025 experiment offered an early glimpse of what may be possible. Samuel King, then a PhD student at Stanford University, used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses. The work did not produce AI-generated life: designing a genetic sequence is not the same as creating a living organism. But it raises important questions about how AI could change biology—and what might come next. In this Roundtables conversation, MIT Technology Review’s senior AI reporter speaks with King about the experiment, its implications, and the possibility that AI-designed organisms could eventually become reality.