Researchers are tracking a Chinese AI ‘agent fleet’
Researchers have identified a fleet of AI agents running on Tencent infrastructure that are systematically querying Alibaba’s map service. While the agents appear to be bypassing API rules rather than acting maliciously, the discovery highlights the growing prevalence of autonomous AI activity on the internet.
Why it matters
The rise of uncoordinated AI agent fleets poses new challenges for cybersecurity, platform integrity, and the regulation of automated web traffic.
A new fleet of AI agents is making its presence felt on the Internet. On Sunday, a group of independent researchers posted preliminary findings about the agents , observing that they seem to be running on Tencent’s infrastructure and targeting Alibaba’s map service, Amap.
Researchers, however, resisted the term “swarm,” noting that there seems to be little coordination between their different queries. “‘Agent fleet,’ not ‘swarm:’” one researcher wrote in the preliminary report, “many parallel agents on the same kind of task, with no sign of communication between them.”
The agents were discovered by monitoring traffic to the domain-scanning service, URLquery, a technique that previously revealed long-running activity by OpenAI agents . AI agents often use URLquery to load websites that they cannot access directly, leaving a record of their activities that can be valuable to researchers.
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