An academic team used AI‑accelerated protein design to generate new anti‑CRISPR proteins (AIcrs) that inhibit Cas13a, producing functional inhibitors in bacterial and human cells within eight weeks. The group leveraged RFdiffusion for generation and ProteinMPNN for folding to design inhibitors for an RNA‑targeting CRISPR effector lacking natural inhibitors. The work, published in Nature Chemical Biology, demonstrates a rapid pipeline from computational design to validated inhibitors and suggests a generalizable route to create off‑switches for genome‑editing tools. Lead designers highlighted the approach’s speed compared with natural Acr discovery. Artificial anti‑CRISPRs could become safety controls in therapeutic editing and synthetic biology, enabling transient, tunable shutdown of editing activity to reduce off‑target risk.