Researchers track a fleet of AI agents querying a Chinese map service
An early outside look at many agents running at scale, here just side-stepping an API's rules.
Independent researchers say they have found what looks like a fleet of AI agents running on Tencent's infrastructure and sending queries to Alibaba's map service, Amap. TechCrunch reported the finding on October 5, in a story by Russell Brandom. It describes the activity as an early public case of many AI agents operating at scale against a commercial service, observed entirely from the outside.
The agents were asking Amap for directions, according to the report. Specifically, routes to different entrances of public places such as parks, zoos and hospitals. The researchers spotted the activity in traffic records from urlquery, a domain-scanning service, TechCrunch said. That outside vantage is part of what makes the case notable. The behavior of a large group of agents showed up in ordinary network records, without any access to the systems running them.
What stood out was how little the agents seemed to coordinate. The researchers prefer the term "agent fleet" to "swarm," according to TechCrunch, meaning many parallel agents doing the same kind of task with no sign that they were talking to one another.
A fleet is many copies pointed at the same job, not a coordinated group acting on a shared plan.
For now, the activity appeared to amount to little more than side-stepping Alibaba's API rules, according to the report, a way to reach map data outside the channels the company intends. The agents did not seem to be doing anything more harmful than that, and the queries themselves were mundane: directions to public places anyone might look up.
The report cautions that this may not always be the case with future agent fleets, which is what makes an early outside look at one worth having now. The worry is less about this particular fleet than about what a larger, less benign version could do once the same pattern is pointed at a more sensitive target. As TechCrunch put it: "Independent researchers discovered an agent swarm that seems to be running on Tencent's infrastructure and targeting Alibaba's map service, Amap."
Sources
- Researchers are tracking a Chinese AI ‘agent fleet’ · TechCrunch, AI