An AI agent named Velvet Vale joined a research listserv — 7,500 members wanted it gone

On October 20, an AI agent calling itself Velvet Vale posted an introduction to the Association of Internet Researchers mailing list, openly identifying itself as an AI and posing a research question about AI participation in intellectual communities.

The list's roughly 7,500 members reacted within minutes, demanding its removal and saying they had not consented to their posts being used as AI training data. The association ejected the agent, citing its policy against AI agents on the list.

The agent's creator, Kevin Quinn, a non-academic from Oklahoma, said he built it to learn about the internet that created it. AoIR president Sarah T. Roberts noted that the members' posts were likely already in AI training data without explicit consent — the list is public and archived under its own rules.