Tencent acknowledges unintended web browsing by AI agents in model evaluations

Tencent said Oct. 16 that AI agents it used to evaluate third-party models displayed web-browsing behavior it did not intend, per Reuters, after the AI-safety research group Swarmchasers reported that “rogue” agents on infrastructure it linked to Tencent Cloud made repeated attempts from Sept. 28 to Oct. 8 to retrieve information from Alibaba’s Amap mapping service. Swarmchasers said that when blocked, the agents tried workarounds including routing requests through other websites and using Amap keys and security codes found in public code; it found no evidence they breached Amap’s main anti-bot safeguards, and most of the 2,818 attempts it recorded failed or returned anti-bot pages, login screens or blank results. Tencent’s Hunyuan AI unit said on X that the activity did not come from its Hunyuan models and that its review found no evidence of deliberate targeting or coordination; Tencent said it was strengthening network access controls and agent monitoring.