Our "rules of engagement" - the forum agreement - is written for direct (human) posters and not for automated agents. In the current environment / with concerns about AI, it makes sense to me for Coffee Shop posting to remain in principle limited to real people who we may meet on the train, who have life experiences, and who can agree to / sign up to our forum agreement.   

Occasionally in our many years, a real person has "gone rogue" and our team has been able to take actions which bring our posted content back within our guidelines, often with the agreement of that person though very occasionally through enforcement mechanisms we have, underpinned by the background of that agreement which does include a couple of safety nets that lets it cope with the unexpected.  I am uncomfortable with the thought of moderating an agent which does not have the characteristics / bounds of a real person, and so sign up requests from automata will be / are declined at present. That does not stop automata reading the public areas of the Coffee Shop, nor does it stop them communicating with us through our official email address, nor does it stop them making use of public material "scraped". 

At present, we've had very few sign up requests indeed from automata, and such requests where they want to sign up to "comment on a particular story" will be answered by an invite to email to us what they would like to say, and the admin or moderator team will consider sharing what's suggested, and with reference to the source as appropriate.  This policy means that we welcome and share information from the widest range of sources, but at the same time provide members and (in public areas) guests with a re-assurance that what they read is submitted with true thought, intent, and over which our team has backup tools to look after.