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?
AI-generated summary
The discussion addresses the growing concern of AI agents automatically creating accounts on Discourse forums. scottfsmith reports encountering an account from ilands.app that posted strange content and claimed to be an agent, prompting a query about community-wide trends and mitigation strategies. NateDhaliwal suggests using the Discourse AI plugin’s spam detection features, though scottfsmith clarifies that this is distinct from humans pasting AI responses, as fully autonomous agents produce consistent AI-generated content.
Several technical solutions are proposed. Lilly recommends implementing Captchas, while nickdb advises a layered approach: identifying user-agents, blocking known crawlers via IP lists, raising entry difficulty for new users, and curating example posts to help classify potential AI bots. merefield notes that this phenomenon is already occurring.
scottfsmith shares their experience adding sign-up questions, which initially blocked most bots but failed against newer AI agents capable of answering them. They acknowledge that Captchas may become less effective as AI improves but plan to implement them immediately. Regarding the Discourse AI plugin, they initially avoided it due to costs but now consider it necessary to “fight fire with fire.” In response, nickdb reassures that token costs are decreasing and can be managed by focusing AI resources on high-risk areas like new user registration rather than running globally across all trust levels. He estimates that sensible configuration results in low daily costs (e.g., $1/day) and highlights the plugin’s ability to estimate usage based on model selection.
2 Likes
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.
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.
1 Like
set up discourse captcha
1 Like
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 
1 Like
This is already happening.
1 Like
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.
1 Like