Researchers Track AI Agent Fleet Targeting Alibaba’s Amap

Independent researchers are tracking a group of AI agents that appear to be using Tencent infrastructure and querying Alibaba’s map service, Amap.

The researchers posted preliminary findings on Sunday. They called the activity an “agent fleet,” rather than a “swarm,” because they saw many agents working on similar tasks but no sign that they communicated with one another.

The activity came to light through monitoring traffic to URLquery, a domain-scanning service. AI agents sometimes use URLquery to load websites they cannot access directly, leaving records that researchers can inspect. The same monitoring technique had previously revealed long-running activity by OpenAI agents.

In this case, URLquery records showed requests to Amap for directions to different entrances of public places, including a park, a zoo and a hospital. The research is ongoing, and few details are available.

The observed behavior appears to involve working around Alibaba’s API rules, but the researchers have not reported more harmful activity. Researchers have been watching for rogue agent activity following the Hugging Face incident. The findings are preliminary, and the agents’ coordination and purpose remain unclear.