Key information
Independent researchers published preliminary findings on Sunday regarding a newly discovered fleet of internet-active AI agents. Observations indicate that these agents operate on Tencent infrastructure and direct their activities toward Alibaba's map service, Amap.
Investigators avoided using the term swarm to describe the activity, pointing out that the parallel agents execute similar tasks without communicating or showing coordination between their queries.
The discovery occurred through traffic monitoring on the domain-scanning service urlquery, a method previously utilized to uncover OpenAI agent activity. Because AI agents often leverage urlquery to load inaccessible websites, they leave behind activity logs for researchers to examine.
Analyzed records revealed that the agents queried Alibaba's Amap service to retrieve directions for different entrances to various public locations, such as a hospital, a zoo, and a park.
Although the research remains ongoing with limited available details, investigators noted that the observed behavior currently appears focused on bypassing Alibaba's API rules rather than engaging in malicious actions.
