Since gun-rights activist and alt-right-friendly agitator Cody Wilson made the first 3D-printed firearm 13 years ago, he’s helped usher in a chaotic era of untraceable ghost guns. Now he's claiming another first: “the first AI-made gun.” It’s called the WASP. I stood about 20 feet away as Wilson and his sidekick clamped the WASP to […]
Tech Design Policy The first vibe-coded gun is here Cody Wilson says his AI model can generate new gun designs for 3D printing. We saw him fire the first one. by Mack DeGeurin Oct 16, 2026, 12:30 PM UTC Link Share Gift The WASP. | Image: Defense Distributed Since gun-rights activist and alt-right-friendly agitator Cody Wilson made the first 3D-printed firearm 13 years ago, he’s helped usher in a chaotic era of untraceable ghost guns . Now he’s claiming another first: “the first AI-made gun.” It’s called the WASP. I stood about 20 feet away as Wilson and his sidekick clamped the WASP to a DIY test mount outside Defense Distributed headquarters in Austin, Texas. The 3D-printed .22 caliber handgun is, in reality, little more than a pistol barrel attached to a spring-loaded plastic box. Its rudimentary design bears a resemblance to Wilson’s single-shot 3D-printed “ Liberator ,” albeit with some quintessentially AI-generated oddities, like a wacky, bubbly grip that doesn’t quite fit a human hand. It was aimed toward a shallow green slope in the backyard of a semi-residential neighborhood. A long black string ran from its trigger to Wilson, who sat crouched about 10 feet back behind a police riot shield. “Three. Two. One.” I braced for a thunderous crack, but instead heard only a loud click. The world’s first AI-generated gun had misfired. “This didn’t happen last time,” Wilson, annoyed, reassured me as he carried out some quick troubleshooting. The gun’s striker had hit the cartridge, he said, but failed to set off the primer. I quietly took another step back. After some more fiddling, Wilson declared the WASP ready for a second chance. This time, pulling the string produced a sharp bang, about as loud as a firecracker. Downrange, a cardboard target had a hole ripped through its top left corner. His colleague had suggested using a life-size cutout of Joe Biden, but Wilson shot that down as “too on the nose.” Related New York governor to 3D-printed gun leader: ‘tell Cody I will get ahead of him’ The cat-and-mouse game over 3D-printed guns has begun Are you ready for what it takes to stop ghost guns? The safety test completed, Wilson then unclamped the WASP, slipped on a protective glove, took aim at the cardboard target, and squeezed the trigger himself. Another bang. This time, a miss, slightly high. The AI gun, today at least, was two for three in terms of shots successfully fired. A hand-drawn target in the backyard of the Defense Distributed headquarters in Austin, Texas. Image: The Verge So is the WASP actually a good gun? Ashley Hlebinsky, a firearms historian and founder of consulting firm The Gun Code , told The Verge that it’s hard to judge without handling it, but several design choices stand out as odd. Most notably, the AI appears to have started making a trigger guard (the loop that normally protects a shooter’s finger) but doesn’t finish it, leaving the trigger exposed, for no apparent reason. The gun also seems to borrow from what are called modern “ beavertail ” grip designs. But bizarrely, the AI appears to have inverted its grip. “It reminds me of times when I’ve prompted AI to draw a picture of a gun and it gets most of the way there but then has some weird parts missing,” Hlebinsky said. “It has an obvious futuristic, sci-fi appearance that reminds me of Marvin the Martian’s ray gun .” Jonathan Ferguson, keeper of firearms and artillery at the Royal Armories Museum in Leeds, England, was more critical when asked if the WASP seemed functional. “Functional? From a legal perspective, if it successfully fires a shot without a breech explosion, it’s a viable firearm, but so are two lengths of steel pipe with a firing pin and cap attached to the rear of one,” Ferguson told The Verge. “From a technical perspective, I would not call this a ‘sound’ or ‘good’ firearm. It does not appear to be comfortable to hold or easy to aim and, based on the test firing, seems to be only marginally functional.” If anything, Ferguson noted, he expected generative AI in 2026 to do a better job at designing a reliable firearm. “There are vestigial sights that can’t work, an open trigger guard, [and a] weirdly shaped grip.” “This certainly is a development, [but] I don’t think it’s necessarily that novel. It’s another way to 3D print a gun,” Wagner said. “A victim of a mass shooting who was shot by a ghost gun told me when you get shot, it doesn’t matter if it’s a ghost gun, a 3D-printed gun, or a gun that got bought over the counter. They’re all just as lethal,” he added. “From a technical perspective, I would not call this a ‘sound’ or ‘good’ firearm.” Wilson is confident his AI’s design will improve, both in terms of functionality and aesthetic uniqueness, as the DEFCAD database grows. More gun files will help, but he expects the biggest gains will come from users chatting with the model and pushing it to refine its choices. (GatGPT is currently in limited early access.) Eventually, he predicts, constant back-and-forth between users and AI could dramatically speed up the pace at which new 3D-printed gun designs appear. “This is all just spontaneous parallel thinking,” Wilson said. “I think you’ll see those cycles faster now because of AI.” “It’s like you’re speedrunning the available possibilities, the materials, the platforms, the concepts,” he added.