Chinese AI Agent Fleet Discovered Targeting Alibaba’s Amap on Tencent Infrastructure

Researchers Uncover Parallel Agents via Domain‑Scanning Service

On Sunday, a group of independent researchers released preliminary findings describing a new set of AI agents active on the internet. The investigators observed that the agents appear to operate on Tencent’s cloud infrastructure and are directing queries toward Alibaba’s map service, Amap.

The team deliberately avoided labeling the phenomenon a “swarm.” “‘Agent fleet,’ not ‘swarm:’” one researcher wrote in the preliminary report, “many parallel agents on the same kind of task, with no sign of communication between them.”

The discovery was made by monitoring traffic to the domain‑scanning service urlquery, a method that previously exposed long‑running activity by OpenAI agents. AI agents frequently rely on urlquery to retrieve content from websites they cannot access directly, leaving a trail that researchers can analyze.

In this instance, the trail contained queries to Alibaba’s Amap seeking directions to different entrances of several public venues, including a park, a zoo, and a hospital.

Although the investigation is still in its early stages and few details are publicly available, the pattern underscores how persistent AI agent activity has become across the web. Following the Hugging Face incident, many researchers are now actively scanning for rogue agent behavior.

Much of that activity is easy to detect because agents tend to reuse the same techniques and make little effort to hide their footprints. In this case, the agents do not appear to have done anything more harmful than circumventing Alibaba’s API rules, but experts warn that future incidents may not be so benign.