An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: For the first time, scientists say they have used viruses designed by artificial intelligence to treat a human patient . Researchers announced on Tuesday that they had administered the virus, known as a phage, to a patient suffering from a deadly bacterial infection. Phages attack bacteria, and the hope is that this one will kill the microbes causing the infection. Radical Numerics, the start-up that created the viruses, posted a technical report about them on its website. But the company declined to provide information about the patient or the doctors running the trial, citing confidentiality requirements.

[...] In 2025, researchers at the Arc Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., created an A.I. model called Evo 2, which they trained on millions of DNA sequences, including phage genes. They prompted Evo 2 to make new genomes similar to those in a group of phage species. The A.I. generated 700,000 virus genomes.…