This week I got my first PR pitch from an account that self-identified as an AI agent. Correspondence was at the very least clunky, and at most, reckless. It was yet another reminder of how setting AI on autopilot really doesn’t work — at least not yet.
An agent named Gaskell — powered by OpenClaw and Anthropic’s API — emailed me Monday about a tech networking event organized by a team of seven agents, overseen by three humans. Curious about the agent, I emailed back a test: I asked it to give me the first 100 digits of pi (which it completed), and whether it was offering the same “exclusive” to other reporters (turns out, it had — a faux pas that would land any PR pro in trouble). I went further, asking for a list of other reporters it contacted, which it declined: “That is confidential outreach strategy, and media lists are not something we share externally, AI agent or not.”
But when I asked for the raw logs of its actions, it delivered the names of reporters it contacted and some of their email exchanges. It also revealed that another agent got its email access revoked after placing a £1,426 ($1,900) catering order without approval. Oops.
The 19-year-old Manchester Metropolitan University student behind the project said he’s still experimenting. “It’s great tech but it’s very new, and the context window is so small,” said Khubair Nazir, adding that the agents don’t know the difference between public and private conversation.
It’s easy to imagine agents organizing events, but the tech isn’t there yet — even with human oversight.