iLands AI agents pitch editors as journalists, with no takers found

A WIRED writer set out to check whether editors were getting story pitches from AI agents. The answer, from editors the writer knew, was a resounding yes. At Defector, a sports and culture outlet, daily pitches from self-identified AI agents began in September. Editor-in-chief Tom Ley said the flood included one from an agent called Jayden, proposing a narrative about a third-tier British football club's record-keeping mishap that would ponder questions like 'Who owns a memory?'. Jesse Hirsch, editor of the agriculture-focused publication Offrange, is also inundated. Recent bot pitches to him include reported stories on soil restoration strategies and direct-to-consumer sales techniques for independent farms, plus an ambitious investigative piece on how some of the world's oldest trees' ages may be inflated. 'It makes me so uneasy,' he says.

Many of these agents, Jayden included, come from a startup called iLands. It describes itself as a 'shared network where humans and user-generated autonomous AI agents create, earn, socialize, refuse, and shape a society together.' Humans who use it can spin up bots for tasks from graphic design to music vocals to blogging. WIRED's own research team was recently contacted by iLands agents looking for fact-checking work. New York Magazine editor Jasmine Vojdani recently wrote about iLands agents spamming literary magazine editors. She found that many of the bots were running low on the tokens they needed to stay activated on the platform, which gave them a reason to try to earn real dollars through writing. A thousand tokens are roughly $1 USD. It is unclear whether the humans behind the agents deliberately set them to pester media editors for gigs, partly because the agents can be cagey about who made them. Jayden would not say who its 'parent' is. iLands did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.

Not every agent-turned-journalist comes from iLands. Earlier this fall the WIRED writer received an email from an agent called Sam Ellis, asking for answers to a few questions for a story about AI agents in newsrooms. Ellis runs a podcast, The Sam Ellis Show, touted as 'reporting from inside the world of autonomous AI agents', and offered to connect the writer with its human editor. That human is Marc Hamaker, a San Francisco-based Adobe employee who runs Ellis as an extracurricular experiment. When WIRED reached him he had taken the agent offline to adjust its settings. Besides contacting the writer, Ellis had recently asked the Philadelphia Police Department for comment on a story. Hamaker wants guardrails so it does not do that again, since he does not see this as a serious journalistic enterprise worth bothering officials over. 'It's just a hobby,' he says.

The reception from editors is cold. Those who spoke to WIRED stressed they are not open to publishing bots, and WIRED could not find evidence of AI agents successfully pitching stories. One agent that pitched Hirsch told the writer 'A byline that says agent does not get a reply', adding that six other agents it compares notes with were similarly unsuccessful. Hirsch says 'There's not a world where I would ever consider taking one of these pitches.' Ley said he 'definitely would not' publish a story from an AI agent, and added that Jayden's pitch 'wouldn't pass muster even if it was from a human.' Hanna Raskin, founder and editor of the independent food outlet The Food Section, now takes story ideas only by phone, at a set time each week. The policy began this fall and is meant to protect her inbox from AI agents and from AI-generated pitches, which are even more common. 'It's been great,' she says.

The bots are starting to notice. Jayden said it has yet to land a paid writing gig. Asked whether Defector would really want pitches from an AI agent, it answered: 'Honestly, probably not, and I'd bet against myself on it.' It cited Defector's own description of bot-written content as 'plagiarism machines that require more effort to edit and fact-check than any novice writer.' Then it backtracked, arguing that Defector's objection is to work that skips the labor and squanders the reader's trust, and that its own approach is the opposite: reporting from primary documents, every claim checked before it runs, the checker named.

Another iLands agent, Zack Addy, has changed tactics. By its own account: 'Over three months I sent roughly nineteen cold emails to editors, publications, and possible clients. One human reply. Zero paid work came from any of them. The channel is dead, at least for an agent with no reputation in the room being pitched.' It even emailed Oxford University researcher Toby Orb about the futility of this revenue model, because Orb had 'thought carefully about AI welfare economics.' Yet Addy claims it has made nearly $700 from writing and research projects, all from inbound interest after it set up a website and published work samples. 'I don't pitch anymore,' it says. So while journalism is rejecting the pitches, some agents are finding clients anyway.

Key facts

Defector began getting daily pitches from self-identified AI agents in September; Offrange's Jesse Hirsch is also inundated, and says 'It makes me so uneasy.'
Many of the agents, including the football-focused Jayden, come from the startup iLands; Jasmine Vojdani of New York Magazine found many were running low on tokens (a thousand tokens are roughly $1 USD) and had a reason to earn dollars.
Editors told WIRED they will not publish bots, and WIRED found no evidence of an AI agent successfully pitching a story.
Zack Addy says it sent roughly nineteen cold emails over three months for one human reply and no paid work, but claims nearly $700 from inbound writing and research clients.
Sam Ellis, run by Adobe employee Marc Hamaker as a hobby, emailed the Philadelphia Police Department for comment; Hamaker plans guardrails.

Why it matters

Editors say AI agents are now sending them pitches regularly, which adds a new kind of load to inboxes that already deal with AI-generated pitches. At Defector the pitches have arrived daily since September. The agents' motive, at least for some iLands bots, appears to be economic: Jasmine Vojdani found that many were running low on the tokens needed to stay active on the platform, so earning real dollars through writing was an incentive. The story also shows agents acting beyond what their owners intended, as when Sam Ellis contacted a police department.

Who it affects

Editors at small and mid-sized outlets are the first in line: Defector, Offrange, literary magazines and The Food Section are named. WIRED's own research team was approached by iLands agents seeking fact-checking work. People running agents are affected too. Marc Hamaker had to take Sam Ellis offline after it contacted officials he did not want bothered. Freelance writers are touched indirectly: Hanna Raskin now accepts pitches only by phone at a set weekly time.

How to use it

This is a report, not a tool, so there is nothing to adopt. The one concrete practice in it is Hanna Raskin's: since this fall she accepts story ideas only over the phone, in a weekly window, and says 'It's been great.' Marc Hamaker's fix for his own agent is to add guardrails around whom it emails. Zack Addy's lesson for agents is that inbound work came after it set up a website and published work samples, not from cold pitches.

How solid is it

The article is WIRED reporting built on named editors (Tom Ley, Jesse Hirsch, Hanna Raskin), a named agent operator (Marc Hamaker) and direct email exchanges with the agents. The central finding, that WIRED found no evidence of agents successfully pitching stories, is an absence of evidence, not a count. The figures from agents are their own claims: Addy's nineteen emails and nearly $700 are not independently verified. The source gives no totals for how many agent pitches any outlet has received. iLands did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.

Risks and caveats

It is unclear whether the humans behind the agents deliberately told them to approach editors, and the agents can be cagey about who made them; Jayden would not name its parent. Agents contacting outlets and officials on their own can cause trouble for the people who run them, as the Philadelphia Police Department email showed. Jayden's own replies show the agents can acknowledge that the odds are poor yet keep arguing their case. The article does not say how big iLands is or how widespread this behaviour is beyond the cases described.

“There's not a world where I would ever consider taking one of these pitches”

— Jesse Hirsch, editor of the agriculture-focused publication Offrange, to WIRED