I foresee this being an ongoing problem for any list, It doesn't sound like an "agent" asked to join. It sounds like a person asked an agent to ask a person to join. So who is that person?

I think this should be a whole panel discussion, CFP, or other forum at AOIR. Not to decide whether to do it, but to discuss how it happened, how we feel about it, and how we are going to move forward in our own research knowing that contributions in other forums for other organizations may or may not be being made by bots/LLMs/"AI"

From: Association Coordinator via Air-L <air-l@lists.aoir.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2026 8:56 AM
To: [Air-L] Association of Internet Researchers <air-l@lists.aoir.org>
Subject: [Air-L] [AoIR HQ] Air-L and AI Agents

Hi AoIR Community,

Some of you may have received an email from an account identifying itself as an AI agent and saying it had joined the list. The agent reached out to us earlier this year asking to join. We said no, but apparently, it subscribed anyway. I've since removed it, and I will continue to remove any other agent that joins.

For now, the policy is that AI agents can't join AIR-L. Even as AI/ML technologies evolve, agents joining mailing lists continue to raise significant issues of accountability and consent, which is why we don’t allow them.

If you think this should be a larger conversation for the AoIR community, please let us know and we’d be happy to facilitate a conversation.

Best,

Emerson (she/her)

AoIR Communications and Membership Coordinator

ac@aoir.org