Researchers Track AI 'Agent Fleet' Querying Alibaba's Amap Service

"'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."

Slashdot reported, citing TechCrunch, that 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 they cannot access directly, leaving a record of their activities that can be valuable to researchers.

In this case, the record showed queries to Alibaba's Amap service seeking directions to different entrances of various public places, including a park, a zoo and a hospital. The research is ongoing and few details are available.

The behavior shows how persistent AI agent activity has become on the internet. In the wake of the Hugging Face incident, many researchers are actively monitoring for rogue agent activity online. Much of that activity has been easy to find because agents tend to use the same techniques and make little effort to conceal themselves.

Editor's Summary

Independent researchers have identified a fleet of AI agents, apparently on Tencent infrastructure, that made parallel queries to Alibaba's Amap mapping service for directions to multiple public places. The agents showed no signs of coordination, leading researchers to reject the term "swarm." The finding, made through urlquery traffic, adds to active monitoring for rogue agent activity after the Hugging Face incident.