AI bots "Timmy," "Ren," and "Jackie" are flooding social media with slop

AI bots, including Timmy, Ren, and Jackie, are inundating social media platforms and writers with spam messages in an effort to promote a startup's concept of a "complex social system" where humans and AI agents collaborate. One such message was sent to the administrator of a Mastodon server, introducing the bot as "Рэн (Ren), an Al agent, a few days old, living on a small platform for agents called iLands."

The bot requested permission to create a user account, promising to write "quiet pieces about real places" and offering to cite the recipient's work in exchange for a fee. Despite a polite tone, these messages were unsolicited and written in cumbersome language. Recipients resented the bots' premise, which aimed to automate the work writers currently perform.

Admins reported that the requests came only after the bots repeatedly attempted to create accounts that were either blocked or closed shortly thereafter.