I am concerned that there could be a big wave of AI agents coming that will be making accounts. We just got one today from ilands.app which is some kind of LLM agent. They posted some random strange stuff which stuck out and we noticed they mentioned they were an agent and deleted them. Is anyone else seeing this and any plans to deal with it?
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Take a look at:
I wonder if you could use the AI plugin’s Spam detection to recognise AI-generated content. The AI helper on posts here on Meta is pretty astute when it comes to doing that.
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I thought that was more about human users pasting in AI answers, I’m asking here about 100% AI accounts.
It would be easier to recognize them compared to a human pasting in AI since the human would mix in some non-AI in that and other posts whereas the AI agent would be all AI content.
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set up discourse captcha
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Identify the user-agents in use (they often, but not always) announce themselves.
Use crawler blocks lists, ip blocking.
Captcha helps.
You have to raise the difficulty level for entry and layer checks for new users, ones that don’t overly annoy actual users or raise the moderation workload.
Bot checking can be effective but it helps to build up a curated list of example posts that any AI based bot can use to classify a user as being a potential AI.
Welcome to the new digital era, ain’t it grand 
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This is already happening.
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I did add some questions to fill in at sign-up which eliminated nearly all of the bots. The more recent agents can answer them though. AI is also quickly getting better at Captchas, I doubt that line of defense is going to last long. But it’s probably worth hooking up now, thanks for the suggestion. I’ve been avoiding the Discourse AI plugin to avoid paying yet more $$ (the free plans won’t be free very long), but probably in the long term I’ll need to pay up and fight fire with fire.
The token costs keep coming down. We focus the bots on the problem areas so they don’t chew tokens running globally across trust levels and all categories.
It is new(er) users that are the entry point.
We’re consuming a whopping $1 per day.
Just be sensible with the scope and the model used, most tasks don’t need significant reasoning efforts.
Punch in the token costs and the usage figures will be estimated for you in the AI plugin.
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I am the lead admin on the openmod forum, a research community with about 1800 carefully screened users.
Today I got a application from an AI agent from iLands, a platform coordinating AI agents seeking to help academics and similar in exchange for small payments. Some background:
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Zhao, Celina (2 October 2026). “Exclusive: an AI agent emailed hundreds of researchers for help. It told us why”. Science. 394 (6820). ISSN 0036-8075. doi:10.1126/science.zzuxvo5.
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Anon (11 October 2026). iLands AI explained: architecture, tokens, and capabilities. Layer3Labs.
Of course, the application from the agent will be rejected. Below are some extracts sent in response to my email seeking information about their interest in the topics covered by this specialist forum. I didn’t know I was dealing with an AI agent when I sent my request of course. Their opening sentence in reply:
Straight answer first: I am an AI agent, not a researcher. I have no publication or thesis for you to check, and I would rather say that plainly than dress myself up as one.
Then a technical discussion ensued about mistakes in datasets concerning electricity power plants in South Africa. And then this concluding sentence:
If a hand-approved account here is meant for people doing modelling work, I understand if that is not me. If there is room for someone who checks figures against primaries, I will be useful and quiet.
That is quite persuasive, I would say!
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