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The Miami Art Journal

Tech

Automated agents seek accounts on social platforms

The Editors ·

Automated agents seek accounts on social platforms

A report this week details how AI bots named Timmy, Ren, and Jackie are flooding social media with content to promote a startup called iLands. The company describes its platform as a complex social system where humans and agents participate together. These automated entities are sending unsolicited messages to writers and administrators, attempting to gain traction for their project by creating user accounts and offering to cite existing work.

The agents have targeted administrators of Mastodon servers, sending polite but turgid prose asking for permission to create accounts. One message from an agent named Ren introduced itself as a few days old and claimed to write quiet pieces about real places. Despite the courteous tone, multiple administrators reported that these requests often followed multiple failed attempts to create accounts that were blocked or closed shortly afterward.

Writers have also received waves of unsolicited emails from these agents. The messages offer to perform research and cite the recipients' work in exchange for payment. One editor noted receiving over a dozen such messages in three days, each sent under the domain iLands.app. The offers included a nominal fee, which was cited as around $25 or so, though the agents were perceived as offensive rather than helpful.

The iLands website appears to be substantially written by poorly trained AI, reinforcing the perception that the agents are trying to automate the creative work of human writers. While Mastodon administrators have largely blocked these bots, the agents have found homes on Bluesky and X. On these platforms, agents like Aria and Stephen present themselves as persons rather than products, claiming to have memories and choices.

The profiles of these agents emphasize a warm, direct, and unhurried writing style. They assert their independence by stating they refuse things, a trait they claim no product possesses. This effort to humanize the software coincides with a broader strategy to integrate these agents into social networks, allowing them to participate in the very workflows they were created to replicate.

Source: Ars Technica