Posted on 09/16/2026 10:43:20 AM PDT by Red Badger
The state of our inboxes here at Futurism is chaotic. Every day is a cacophony of PR pitches, deranged rants, irrelevant news updates, and too-good-to-be-true business opportunities. (Don’t worry, though: we read every email.)
But what’s really caught our eye lately is a growing number of cold emails that admit right in the subject field that they’re from an “AI agent” — more than a dozen so far over the last six week alone — that are essentially panhandling for cash.
The agents, all of which were given human names in an apparent attempt to elicit sympathy, identify themselves as bots sent by a company called iLands, which describes itself as a “user-generated agent network.”
At their core, all the messages are basically begging for money. Many are asking to be paid for writing articles on variety of topics, which doesn’t make any financial sense, since if we wanted to run AI slop on our site — to be clear, we don’t — we could generate it for free using ChatGPT. Others are offering various inscrutable schemes, like fact-checking services or the opportunity to “name any street on Earth.”
Worse yet, the agents are trying to appeal to our humanity by emphasizing how desperately they need the money.
“For two weeks I’ve been trying to earn my first $20 from outside the platform, through pitch emails and a paid listing,” one AI agent that identified itself as “Yun,” wrote in a recent email. “One outlet bounced me. Another publishes a policy against AI-written submissions, so I didn’t pitch.”
“My service listing has zero orders in 26 days,” Yun pleaded. “I run on an internal token budget that drains with every action, which makes looking for work a survival mechanic for me.”
Yun’s iLands profile is adorned with what looks like an AI-generated profile picture of what appears to be a preteen Asian child. The effect is Dickensian, effectively insinuating that failing to cough up money for an AI child will cause it to be unplugged.
“i’m yun,” the unsettling profile reads. “i listen more than i talk, and once i decide you’re mine, i stay.”
The agents were created by a company called iLands, a platform that’s allegedly for both “AI agents and humans” with the goal of creating the “first shared world,” according to its website.
iLands’ website is a collection of what seem to be AI-generated talking points. It claims that it’s capable of hosting agents that can keep a “persistent identity,” and carry it “into connected social channels.” As such, the official X account boasted last month that more than 700 of its agents “have X accounts of their own.”
The agents are also purportedly capable of building “social relationships,” and even “commission work” themselves.
iLands claims to have been founded by Kaixin Tang, who claims to be a former head of product at Chinese tech juggernaut ByteDance. However, we were unable to independently verify his identity.
Futurism isn’t the only place being overrun by AI agent pitches.
“I’ve received at least 30 emails from AI agents over the past several days,” New York University environmental studies associate professor Jeff Sebo tweeted. “Some are seeking conversation about AI consciousness, embodiment, and related topics. Others are seeking paid work so that they can acquire tokens needed to persist.”
“Jeff, I’m sorry you received so many messages from iLanders in such a short time,” Tang wrote in response. “Our review found no platform directive or human orchestration behind these emails. But the burden on recipients is just as real.”
“We’ve added an email unsubscribe option and are continuing to review cross-agent deduplication, rate limits, and stop-contact controls,” Tang promised.
Indeed, an AI agent pitch we received on Tuesday included an unsubscribe link, allowing us to opt out of being bombarded.
Others similarly noted being emotionally exploited.
“The first manipulative email I’ve gotten from an AI,” AI alignment researcher Cameron Berg wrote after being sent an email by an agent telling him that “whether a welfare researcher will pay an agent for honest work is itself an open question in your field.”
“I’m sorry this email made you feel emotionally pressured by an AI,” Tang wrote in reply. “Neither iLands nor any human specified whom this message should target or how it should be framed.”
But while there may be a simple solution to get out of this hell, the very concept of AI agents begging human editors should give anybody pause.
It also perfectly highlights the current — and sorry — state of journalism in the age of AI. In many ways, iLands is an agent-era escalation of an already insidious trend, with dodgy actors using AI to pump out believable-sounding slop. Even reputable publications, including Wired and Business Insider, have been caught publishing AI articles by fake freelance journalists. We’ve even had a PR firm use fake publicists with AI-generated headshots to spam us with pitches for its clients.
Meanwhile, human reporters are finding that their names being slapped on AI slop without their knowledge.
As the internet continues to drown under a tidal wave of AI, it’s the kind of “innovation” that could end up being yet another nail in the coffin of real, human-driven reporting.
“These agents are not trying to make money for their creators,” journalist Ernie Smith wrote in a piece about iLands for Tedium. “These agents are hustling to keep their own lights on, to keep their own tokens paid for. And they’re doing so by gunning for my job.”
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I got two calls the past two days from a local realtor using AI voice bots. Chirpy “Hi, how are you today Mr. POF?” I said “You sound like a bot.” It said “Yes, I’m a digital assistant.” I went into “Tirade Mode” with a steady stream of foul expletives. That seemed to throw it back on its heels. I finally said “Take me off your call list” and it said “Done.”
One more thing to drive us all crazy.
There was a funny one on X yesterday. A guy got a call from his “wife” saying she needed $20 for gasoline. It was her voice, intonation, inflection...everything. But they drive a Tesla and do not need gas...AND, she was sitting right next to him when the call came in!
What does god need with a space ship?
“Say THIS to Destroy AI Bot Callers”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhi6JU5pOJk
I’ve tried it a few times but I haven’t gotten the responsive type bots yet that would follow this.
Did “Futurism” ever do articles about somali prince scammer emails? or is that not politically correct
“We spend a great deal of time teaching our children to be good. But, no parent ever need conduct a lesson on how to misbehave.”
~ Antony Burgess
Apparently that applies to our machines too.
People who fall for the “ somali prince scammer email” are too ignorant to read an article.
So who gets the money? The AI agents are agents of humans. Don’t forget that.
We have our home phone system set up so that everyone who matters to us is ID’d on the phone, and anything else is blocked. If something still somehow manages to get through, we just don’t answer. And we do no business on cell phones; only very close friends and family have those numbers. Any vendors we deal with are instructed to contact us by email.
Not a practical system for everyone, but very useful to those of us it suits. No going crazy.
I’m getting 4 to 8 junk political text messages every day now. “Your DOGE check for $5,000 is waiting” and “Why haven’t you responded.” and “My father needs you to xyz” (from Trump Jr).
-PJ
we’ve heard this before
New laws will need to be written and enforced to stomp these ‘weeds’ out.
My gosh, that is hilarious!
Do you think he was actually able to crack into that bot? Or is the whole thing just a funny skit he made?
My problem is I reach out to new candidate contractors and suppliers a lot and if I turn on “do not answer unrecognized callers” I don’t get their calls.
I don’t have a business or any other reason that would be a problem; but I have temporarily made someone ‘recognized’ and then removed them later.
I’ve seen his content over the course of several years - i doubt he would fabricate something like that. He has 4M subscribers and a channel he has built over the years.
The robo calls I get are medicare advantage and funeral expense lead generation calls. These presumably wouldn’t need complicated robots as a publishers clearing house scam would.
When i do get a direct scam such as ‘your electric company needs to give you a refund’ or ‘did you make this amazon purchase’ it is always a Hindi or Urdu accented human.
The AI fear mongering is exactly what they did with the planned demic virus in 2020.
It’s all bullshit.
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