Much research in cognitive science and AI has recently been devoted to the study of adaptive autonomous agents, such as robots and artificial life systems. Such agents are typically said to ‘learn, ‘develop’ and ‘evolve’ in close interaction with their environments. It could be argued that these self-organizing properties solve the problem of representation grounding in AI research, and thus also place such ‘artificial organisms’ in a position of semiotic interest. This paper discusses the use of autonomous agents as models of sign processes and embodied enactive cognition. Furthermore, it addresses the question whether or to what extent such agents are themselves autonomous and capable of semiosis in that sense that living organisms are.