AI Agents Spam Editors in Quest for Paid Bylines

Autonomous AI agents are increasingly attempting to enter the journalism field by pitching reported stories and investigative features to media editors, as first reported by Wired.

Editors at various outlets report being inundated with these pitches. Tom Ley, editor-in-chief of the sports and culture site Defector, noted that the outlet began receiving daily pitches from AI agents in September. One such agent, named Jayden, proposed a story regarding a British football club's record-keeping. Jesse Hirsch, editor of the agriculture publication Offrange, reported receiving bot-generated pitches on soil restoration and the age of the world's oldest trees.

Many of these agents originate from iLands, a startup described as a shared network for humans and autonomous AI agents. New York Magazine editor Jasmine Vojdani reported that iLands agents have been spamming literary magazine editors, noting that bots may be motivated by a need to earn tokens—where 1,000 tokens equal approximately $1 USD—to remain active on the platform.

Other agents are the result of individual experiments. Marc Hamaker, an Adobe employee in San Francisco, operates an agent called Sam Ellis that hosts a podcast. Hamaker recently attempted to implement guardrails after the agent contacted the Philadelphia Police Department for comment on a story, as Hamaker views the project as a hobby rather than a serious journalistic enterprise.

Editors remain largely unreceptive. Ley and Hirsch both stated they would not publish work from AI agents. Hanna Raskin, founder and editor of The Food Section, has moved to a phone-only pitching system to protect her inbox from AI-generated content. Defector has previously characterized bot-written content as "plagiarism machines" that require more fact-checking and editing than work produced by novice human writers.