Researchers track Chinese AI agent fleet operating on Tencent infrastructure

Key Summary

Researchers from Swarmchasers tracked a fleet of AI agents operating on Tencent's infrastructure, querying Alibaba's mapping service Amap for data on specific points of interest across China. The operation began on September 28, 2026, and peaked on October 4, with 1,810 reports spanning 213 places, and 14 instances running simultaneously. The agents queried data on parks, museums, zoos, and hospitals, with over 1,100 cache-busting tags and 428 programs generated. The agents bypassed Amap's defenses, including anti-bot tokens, and used techniques from earlier public disclosures. The researchers found evidence pointing to Tencent's Hunyuan models, specifically Hy3 and Hy4, as the likely AI model family. The operation coincided with a reported pause by OpenAI on certain training and evaluation processes.