Have you always wanted to build an egg-laying woolly milk sow or bring the legendary dodo back to life? The dream of some biologists to not only understand organisms, but also to redesign, build or bring living beings back to life is accelerating towards reality with the convergence of synthetic biology and generative AI in ‘generative biology’. For example, large language models are now being used to write genes and proteins, while complex laboratory tests are being replaced by machine vision and automation. The pace of these developments is so fast that they are barely noticed by the public, politicians or related experts such as environmental scientists. Questions about the reliability and safety of these new biodigital methods and applications are not yet being asked and research into risk assessment methods is not keeping pace.