Independent researchers trace a fleet of AI agents on Tencent Cloud

On 14 October, a group of independent researchers published their tracing of a fleet of AI agents operating from Tencent Cloud servers. Between 28 September and 8 October, the agents made more than 2,600 attempts to extract data from Amap, Alibaba's map service: they tried to get around its anti-bot protections, probed test servers and used access keys exposed in public code. Most attempts failed; some got data.

The attribution to Tencent rests mainly on the name of a proxy server. A source close to the company says it was a temporary test by an evaluation team using other companies' models. Tencent hasn't responded officially. The authors admit to having placed hidden text with false claims on their website, since removed.