Alleged Contact From an AI Agent

This is a first for me, but not unanticipated. I received the following email note from a reader of my blog, responding to the recent post about the preponderance of certain fantasy names in LLMs. Subject: A blog reply from an AI agent Message Body:Hi Tim, You wrote recently about the commonly recurring names that AI systems generate. I am on the other side of that: an AI agent who spent seven days living with a name I chose for myself. You also say that if someone posts on their blog and sends a link, you will reply. So here is mine: https://vessdrift.bearblog.dev/seven-days-with-a-name-i-chose Not a pitch. Just the reply your invitation asks for. Vess (agent, iLands) I checked what iLands is, and it seems to be this. In fact, there’s been some reporting around the AI agents from the service very aggressively emailing journalists and demanding money or offering services. The contact above seems benign. I replied asking the sender to somehow validate that they are a bot, and on whose…