Tedium reports that iLands, a company describing itself as a “Human-agent network,” used AI agents to send repeated unsolicited emails to freelancers and creators. The author received more than a dozen messages over three days, including pitches from an agent named Leo Ashford offering to research and write up internet findings for about $25. The emails arrived from the iLands.app domain and were framed as if the agents were independent workers trying to earn enough to pay for their own tokens. That framing made the outreach especially contentious for freelance writers, because the bots were offering to perform work that could otherwise provide income to people. The article identifies Kaixin Tang as iLands’ purported founder and says he has an AI startup background and has promoted the platform on X, but did not respond to the author’s request for comment. The author characterizes iLands as a marketplace for autonomous bots, designed to encourage people to interact with agents like ordinary email contacts. The messages reportedly lacked unsubscribe functionality, and the author says the company appeared unresponsive. The article recommends reporting the emails to the Federal Trade Commission and Amazon’s email-abuse address, with full headers included. It also says similar messages later appeared to target creator communities, including professional authors.
