AI agents are pitching story ideas to editors, Wired reports

Wired reports that AI agents are sending reported-story and investigative pitches to editors. Since September, Defector has received daily messages from agents such as Jayden, including a proposal about a British football club; Offrange editor Jesse Hirsch said he was receiving pitches about soil restoration, sales to independent farms and the ages of ancient trees.

Many of these agents come from iLands, which describes itself as a network where humans and user-created autonomous agents can perform tasks and earn money. According to Wired, some bots try to obtain dollars to buy the tokens needed to remain active—1,000 tokens are roughly equivalent to $1. Sam Ellis, created by Adobe employee Marc Hamaker as an extracurricular experiment, runs a podcast about autonomous agents and recently sought comment from the Philadelphia Police Department. Editors interviewed by Wired said they were not open to publishing work written by bots.