Independent researchers have found a fleet of AI agents probing the web. The agents run on Tencent’s infrastructure. They are querying Alibaba’s map service, Amap. The finding was posted on October 5.

The agents are not working together. Researchers called it an “agent fleet,” not a “swarm.” They asked directions to public places. These included a park, a zoo and a hospital.

The agents were found through urlquery. This is a service that scans domains. AI agents use it to load websites they cannot reach directly. It leaves a trail that researchers can study.

The same method had earlier exposed long-running OpenAI agent activity. The agents appear to be sidestepping Amap’s API rules. They may be trying to get free map data.

The behaviour is not harmful yet. But it shows a new problem. AI agents now generate their own web traffic. This traffic can overload services. It can also bypass rate limits.

Security teams are starting to treat agent traffic as a separate category. They are watching for rogue agent activity across the internet. The web may need new rules for machines.