Cody Wilson, the Defense Distributed founder who produced the first 3D-printed firearm 13 years ago, is claiming another first: the WASP, a .22-calibre handgun he describes as the first AI-made gun, its design generated with AI in what The Verge describes as a "vibe-coded" process.
In person, the weapon is far from sleek. The Verge's reporter, standing about 20 feet away, described a pistol barrel attached to a spring-loaded plastic box - a design closer to Wilson's single-shot Liberator than to a modern handgun, complete with an ill-fitting, bubbly grip that bears the fingerprints of AI generation.
The demonstration outside Defense Distributed's Austin, Texas, headquarters was imperfect: clamped to a homemade test mount and fired remotely by a string, the WASP misfired on its first attempt before firing on the second and tearing a hole in a cardboard target. Wilson then fired it by hand, missing high - two successful shots from three attempts on the day.
The stunt lands in the middle of a long-running fight over downloadable, untraceable "ghost guns." Whether an AI-generated design changes that debate legally is unclear, but Wilson's demonstration signals that generative design tools are now part of the argument.
