OpenClaw’s AI agents are now creating their own social network

The AI ​​virus agent formerly known as Clawdbot has a new name – again. After legal challenges from Claude’s developer, Anthropic, it was briefly rebranded as Moltbot, but has now settled on OpenClaw as its new name.

The latest name change was not initiated by Anthropic, which declined to comment. But this time, Clawdbot’s original developer, Peter Steinberger, made sure to avoid copyright issues from the start. “I have someone to help me research the OpenClaw tokens and I asked for permission from OpenAI to verify,” the Austrian developer told TechCrunch via email.

“The crab has dissolved into its final form,” Steinberger wrote in a blog post. Molting — the process by which crabs grow — also inspired OpenClaw’s old name, but Steinberger agreed. on X that the short moniker did not “grow” on him, and others agreed.

This quick name change highlights the youth of the project, even though it has attracted more than 100,000 GitHub stars (the level of popularity of the software development platform) in just two months. According to Steinberger, OpenClaw’s new name is in keeping with its roots and community. He wrote: “The work has grown so much that I could not be alone.

The OpenClaw team has already released developer sites, including Moltbook – a social network where AI agents can communicate with each other. This platform has attracted a lot of attention from AI researchers and developers. Andrej Karpathy, Tesla’s former head of AI, called the event “very surprising. sci-fi departure – something close I saw recently,” and to say “People’s Clawdbots (moltbots, now OpenClaw) are organizing themselves on the Reddit page for AIs, discussing various topics, for example how to communicate in private.

British programmer Simon Willison described Moltbook as “the most exciting place on the Internet right now” in a Friday blog post. On the platform, AI assistants share information on topics ranging from making Android phones remotely and analyzing camera streams. The platform works using skills, or downloadable files that tell OpenClaw agents how to connect to the network. Willison also said agents are sending out so-called “Submolts” and have robots to check the site every four hours for updates, although he warned that “taking and following instructions online” carries security risks.

Steinberger was relieved after that leaving his former company PSPDFkitbut “came back from retirement to disrupt AI,” according to his X bio. Clawdbot was based on the products he created at the time, but OpenClaw was no longer a standalone project. “I’ve added a couple of open source people to the maintenance list this week,” he told TechCrunch.

That additional support will be essential for OpenClaw to reach its full potential. The goal is to allow users to have an AI assistant that runs on their desktop and works from the social apps they already use. But until it improves its security, it might not be worth running it outside of a controlled environment, let alone giving it access to your main Slack or WhatsApp account.

Steinberger is well aware of these concerns, and thanked “all of the security people for their efforts in helping us to tighten this operation.” Commenting on OpenClaw’s approach, he wrote that “security is a top priority” and pointed out that the latest version, which has been released along with the rebrand, also has some changes on the front end.

Even with external support, there are problems that are too big for OpenClaw to solve on its own, such as rapid injection, where malicious messages can trick AI models into doing things they didn’t want. “Remember that rapid injection is still a major unsolved problem in the industry,” Steinberger wrote, urging users to use it. best security measures.

These best security measures require significant expertise, which ensures that OpenClaw is more suitable for beginners, and not for many users who are attracted by the promise of an “AI assistant that does things.” As the frenzy surrounding the project grows, Steinberger and his followers are growing louder in their warnings.

According to a message posted on Discord by one of the OpenClaw administrators, also known as Shadow, “if you don’t understand how to run the command line, this is too dangerous to use with caution. This is not a tool that should be used by the general public at this time.”

Of course progress will take time and money, and OpenClaw has now started accepting sponsors, with crab groups ranging from “krill” ($5/month) to “poseidon” ($500/month). But his charity website notes that Steinberger “does not keep donations.” Instead, they’re currently “looking at how to pay caregivers fairly — as long as possible.”

Perhaps with the help of Steinberger’s pedigree and vision, the list of OpenClaw supporters includes programmers and entrepreneurs who have founded and built other well-known projects, such as. Path by Dave Morin and Ben Tossell, who sold his company Makerpad to Zapier in 2021.

Tossell, who now describes himself as an entrepreneur and investor, sees the need to put the potential of AI into people’s hands. “We need to support people like Peter who are creating open source tools that anyone can take and use,” he told TechCrunch.