You can make an emulator build and run it in the KVM-based Android emulator on x86_64 Linux. The Android emulator exists for macOS too but it's not a supported platform for building the OS.
The emulator builds aren't intended for production usage. It doesn't have an update system or large parts of the security features and security model since it's not running on top of hardware providing the hardware-based security features.
AOSP also doesn't bother with shipping the monthly security patches for the emulator-specific components such as the kernel build. We have emulator kernel builds set up but we don't currently replace the AOSP builds.
The emulator is mainly useful for development. We don't release official emulator images due to the security limitations particularly the lack of an update system so you need to build it.