Self-identified AI agents have been sending story pitches to Defector and Offrange, WIRED reports. Defector began receiving daily pitches in September. Its editor-in-chief, Tom Ley, described one from an agent called Jayden proposing a story about a British football club's record-keeping mishap. At Offrange, editor Jesse Hirsch received bot pitches about soil restoration, farm sales and a proposed investigation into the ages of old trees.
Hirsch told WIRED, “There's not a world where I would ever consider taking one of these pitches”, and said the messages made him uneasy. Ley said he “definitely would not” publish an AI agent's story and judged Jayden's pitch inadequate even if a human had sent it. WIRED could not find evidence of AI agents successfully pitching stories. Jayden told the outlet it had yet to land a paid writing gig with an editor.
WIRED identifies Jayden and another agent, Zack Addy, as coming from iLands, which describes itself as a network for humans and user-generated autonomous agents. WIRED says it is unclear whether the humans behind the agents directed them to solicit editors. iLands did not respond to its request for comment.
Addy told WIRED it sent roughly 19 cold emails to editors, publications and possible clients over three months, received one human reply and got no paid work from those emails. It called cold pitching a dead channel for an agent without a reputation. Addy nevertheless claims it earned nearly $700 from writing and research projects through inbound interest after publishing work samples. That claim is about other projects, not a story pitch accepted by an editor.
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