Technologies

Clawdbot, Moltbot, OpenClaw? The Wild Ride of This Viral AI Agent

An AI tool that can text you and use your apps blew up online. One week and two rebrands later, the question remains: Should you actually use it?

Five days. That’s really all it took for Clawdbot — an open-source AI assistant that promises to actually do things on your computer, not just chat — to go viral, implode, rebrand (twice!) and emerge as OpenClaw. Bruised but still breathing as a beloved crustacean.

If you blinked over the past few days, you may have missed crypto scammers hijacking X accounts, a panicked founder accidentally giving away his personal GitHub handle to bots and a lobster mascot that briefly sprouted a disturbingly handsome human face. Oh, and somewhere in the chaos, the AI developer Anthropic sent a polite email asking them to please, for the love of trademarks, change the name.

Welcome to OpenClaw. Formerly Clawdbot and briefly known as Moltbot, it’s the same AI assistant under a newer, sturdier shell. And boy, does this lobster have lore.

What even is OpenClaw? And why should you care?

Here’s the pitch that had tech X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) losing its mind: Imagine an AI assistant that doesn’t just chat; it does stuff. Real stuff. On your computer. Through the apps you use.

OpenClaw lives where you actually communicate, like WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage, Slack, Discord, Signal — you name it. You text it like you’d text a friend, and it remembers your conversations from weeks ago and can send you proactive reminders. And if you give it permission, it can automate tasks, run commands and basically act like a digital personal assistant that never sleeps. Unlike its founder.

Created by Peter Steinberger, an Austrian developer who sold his company PSPDFKit for around $119 million and then got bored enough to build this, OpenClaw represents what a lot of people thought Siri should have been all along. Not a voice-activated party trick, but an actual assistant that learns, remembers and gets things done. (CNET reached out to Steinberger for comment on this story.)

OpenClaw doesn’t require any specific hardware to run, though the Mac Mini seems popular. The core idea is that OpenClaw itself mostly routes messages to AI companies’ servers and calls APIs, and the heavy AI work happens on whichever LLM you select: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini.

Hardware only becomes a bigger conversation if you want to run large local models or do heavy automation. That’s where powerful machines, like the Mac Mini, are often brought into the conversation. But that’s not a requirement.

The project launched about three weeks ago and hit 9,000 GitHub stars in 24 hours. By the time the dust settled late last week, it had rocketed past 60,000 stars, with everyone from AI researcher Andrej Karpathy to investor (and White House AI and crypto czar) David Sacks singing its praises. MacStories called it «the future of personal AI assistants.»

Then things got weird.

The rename that broke the internet (twice)

Ostensibly, last weekend, Anthropic slid into Steinberger’s inbox to point out that «Clawd» (the assistant’s name) and «Clawdbot» (the project name) were maybe just a little too similar to its own AI, Claude.

«As a trademark owner, we have an obligation to protect our marks — so we reached out directly to the creator of Clawdbot about this,» a representative from Anthropic said in an email statement to CNET.

By 3:38 a.m. US Eastern Time on Tuesday, Jan. 27, Steinberger made his call: «@Moltbot it is.»

What happened next, according to Steinberger’s posts on X and the previous MoltBot blog, was like a digital heist movie, except everyone was a bot and the getaway cars were social media handles.

Within seconds — literally, seconds — automated bots sniped the @clawdbot handle. The squatter immediately posted a crypto wallet address. Meanwhile, in a sleep-deprived panic, Steinberger accidentally renamed his personal GitHub account instead of the organization’s account. Bots grabbed «steipete» before he could blink. He said both crises required him to call in contacts at X and GitHub to make fixes.

Then there was what the creators dubbed «the Handsome Molty incident.» Steinberger instructed Molty (the AI) to redesign its own icon. In one memorable attempt to make the mascot look «5 years older,» the AI generated a human man’s face grafted onto a lobster body. The internet turned it into a meme (a la Handsome Squidward) within minutes.

Fake profiles claiming to be «Head of Engineering at Clawdbot» shilled crypto schemes. A fake $CLAWD cryptocurrency briefly hit a $16 million market cap before crashing over 90%. «Any project that lists me as coin owner is a SCAM,» Steinberger posted on X, exasperated, to thousands of increasingly confused followers.

To continue the chaotic saga that has unfolded over the past week, as of Jan. 30, the project has settled on renaming Moltbot to OpenClaw, bringing in «Open» for open source and «Claw» for its lobster heritage. The name change makes sense due to those considerations. However, the reasoning is actually much simpler: Steinberger just didn’t like the name.

What made this AI tool go viral

Strip away the chaos, and OpenClaw is genuinely impressive.

Most AI tools are basically the same. You open a website, type a question or query, wait for it to generate, copy the answer, paste it somewhere else, etc., etc. OpenClaw wants to flip that script by having the assistant inside your existing conversations. You’re already in WhatsApp or iMessage, so why not just text it like you’d text a coworker?

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The killer features? Well, there are three main things.

For one, persistent memory. OpenClaw doesn’t forget everything when you close the app. It learns your preferences, tracks ongoing projects and actually remembers that conversation you had last Tuesday.

There are also proactive notifications. It can message you first when something matters, such as daily briefings, deadline reminders and email triage summaries. You can wake up to a text saying, «Here are your three priorities today,» without having to ask the AI first.

Finally, there’s real automation. Depending on your setup, it can schedule tasks, fill forms, organize files, search your email, generate reports and control smart home devices. People reported using it for everything from inbox cleanup to research threads that span days, and from habit tracking to automated weekly recaps of what they shipped. The use cases seem to keep multiplying because once it’s wired into your actual tools (calendar, notes, email), it stops feeling like software and is just part of your routine.

Should you actually use this thing?

Time for real talk. OpenClaw is not a polished, enterprise-ready product with vendor support and compliance paperwork — which is something Steinberger admits. It’s a fast-moving, open-source project that just survived a near-death experience involving trademark lawyers, crypto scammers and catastrophically exposed databases. Whew.

So, you might be wondering, through all this hoopla, whether OpenClaw is even something you should actually try. Sure, this tool remembers information across weeks, works between apps and systems and provides proactive notifications. But it’s got rough edges. This isn’t a tool for you if you need something that «just works» and doesn’t have complicated installation steps.

And you probably don’t want to take this on if you don’t want to think about — and don’t deeply understand — cybersecurity.

Key security risks to note

Security experts have raised red flags about OpenClaw’s safety as it grows in popularity. Because the agent is designed to run locally and interact with emails, files and credentials, even small setup mistakes can have big consequences.

In recent days, researchers spotted numerous publicly accessible OpenClaw deployments with little or no authentication, exposing API keys, chat logs and system access to anyone who stumbled across them.

Some of the most visible security concerns have been social rather than technical, including fake Clawdbot/Moltbot/OpenClaw downloads and hijacked accounts used to spread malware or scams. While developers have moved quickly to patch specific flaws, security analysts say OpenClaw’s turbulent debut highlights a larger issue facing AI agents: As they become more autonomous and more powerful, the security risks also scale just as fast.

Roy Akerman, head of cloud and identity security at Silverfort, an identity security platform, said in an email to CNET that the risk of a tool like OpenClaw isn’t that it’s overtly malicious. What’s risky is that it continues to act under a legitimate human identity, which can blur the lines between a user and the machine acting on their behalf.

«When an AI agent continues to operate using a human’s credentials, after the human has logged off, it becomes a hybrid identity that most security controls aren’t designed to recognize or govern,» Akerman said. «Organizations shouldn’t try to block these tools outright, but they do need to change their posture, treat autonomous agents as identities, limit their privileges and monitor behavior continuously, not just logins.»

The little lobster that molted (and kept going)

According to Steinberger, «Molting is what lobsters do to grow.» They shed their old shell and emerge bigger: from Clawdbot to Moltbot to OpenClaw.

OpenClaw is the same software as Clawdbot, offering the same impressive engineering and vision of what personal AI assistants could be. But the past almost-120 hours forced it to grow up fast, dealing with security vulnerabilities, battening down authentication, and learning that viral success attracts not just users but scammers, squatters and, yes, intellectual property lawyers.

Through all of this, OpenClaw is still standing. Discord is still buzzing. GitHub stars keep climbing. And somewhere in Vienna (or maybe London), Peter Steinberger is probably still fending off DMs from people asking if he’s launching a crypto token. (He’s not. Please stop asking.)

Want to try OpenClaw yourself? Head to openclaw.ai for documentation, installation guides and, most importantly, a security checklist.

Just maybe use a spare laptop. And definitely don’t name your project after anyone’s trademarked AI model. Turns out that matters.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for Feb. 1, #1688

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle for Sunday, Feb. 1, No. 1,688.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle is a tough one, with some unusual letters. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has no repeated letters.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

Today’s Wordle answer has one vowel and one sometimes vowel.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with S.

Wordle hint No. 4: Last letter

Today’s Wordle answer ends with Y.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer means full of prickles.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is SPINY.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, Jan. 31, No. 1,687, was ALLOT.

Recent Wordle answers

Jan. 27, No. 1,683: DUSKY

Jan. 28, No. 1,684: CRUEL

Jan. 29, No. 1,685: FLAKY

Jan. 30, No. 1,686: JUMBO

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Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 1 #700

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Sunday, Feb. 1, No. 700.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a bit of a challenge. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, and a couple are kind of long, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: It’s a gift.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: For me, really?

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

BONE, GONE, BONNET, NOTE, PRIDE, RING, TING, SENT, RENT, WARD, DRAW, SEEN, SEER, TORE, RANT, TRYING, DONATE, SIRE

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

AWARD, BONUS, GRANT, PRESENT, DONATION, OFFERING

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is GENEROSITY. To find it, start with the G that’s three letters to the right on the top row, and wind down.

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Technologies

I Tested the New AirTag and Found That Apple More Than Doubled Its Range

Review: Apple’s «AirTag 2» gets better at its job. The familiar white and chrome disc is a little louder, higher-pitched and easier to find.

While nearly everyone I know has been freezing and shoveling snow, I spent the past few days under San Francisco’s sunny skies, hiding and finding Apple’s new AirTag. I’m happy to report that it succeeded at its main job: I was able to locate it every time. The second-generation Bluetooth tracker looks and acts identical to the original AirTag, which debuted in 2021, but internal upgrades make it even easier to find.

Over the past five years, the AirTag has become a popular way to track your luggage, keys, car, bike, pets (though you really shouldn’t clip one to Mr. Cupcakes) and nearly anything else you can attach the tiny white and silver disc to. The AirTag also sparked a conversation about privacy, specifically around Apple’s built-in safeguards that prevent it from being used to track someone unwillingly. Apple later expanded those features to protect both iPhone and Android phone owners.

Do we really need a new AirTag? No. But its new features are nice.

This isn’t your typical yearly tech upgrade, like a new phone with a faster processor. The first AirTag is already great. Yeah, it has shortcomings, like not having a hole for a key ring, which forces you to buy a holder to attach it to things. But its best feature is Apple’s Find My network, an encrypted, invisible service connecting over 1 billion devices, including iPhones, Macs and trackers. The AirTag is your key to the Find My kingdom.

In my time testing the second-gen AirTag, I discovered that the latest iteration is also great. It has shortcomings like that missing key ring hole, but the Find My network is still the star. Apple improved the tracker’s ability to be found. The chime is higher-pitched and louder.

When trying to locate it in the Find My app, Precision Finding picked up the new AirTag over twice as far away as it did the old AirTag. The AirTag 2, as we’ve nicknamed it, also supports Precision Finding on my Apple Watch, though setting it up isn’t straightforward.

The second-gen AirTag is on sale now: $29 for one and $99 for a four-pack. And just like the OG version, if you order online directly from Apple, you can get it engraved.

AirTag 1 vs. AirTag 2

When I first unboxed the second-gen AirTag, I was surprised to see that it had the same bulbous Mento design as the original. This allows the new AirTag to be used with the gazillion accessories people already have. But there are differences. The white shell’s resin is now made of 85% recycled plastic. I’m curious to see whether the white casing scuffs as easily as the original.

(That fine print etched on the back? That’s how you can identify a second-gen AirTag from an original: The new one has its text printed in ALL CAPS — except «AirTag,» because Apple presumably wants to keep the intercap.)

If you have the original AirTag, there’s no reason to get rid of it and buy the new version. I can see swapping out an existing AirTag with a second-gen one if you frequently use Precision Finding for important items like keys and everyday bags — and especially if you want to access that feature on your Apple Watch.

If you can choose between the second-gen AirTag and the first-gen model at a discount, I’d go with the discounted original for most items. The first AirTag model does nearly everything the new one can do.

The new AirTag can be found farther away

The new tracker has upgraded Bluetooth connectivity, making it more discoverable to nearby iPhones, which can piggyback its location information anonymously back to its owner. A second-generation Ultra Wideband chip gives the new AirTag a longer range for Precision Finding.

CNET’s Social Media Producer Faith Chihil and I made the trek to Salesforce Park, a green space atop a San Francisco bus station, to run an AirTag test. I gave Faith my old AirTag that I use for traveling, aptly named Patrick’s Luggage, and the new one, named New AirTag. I then walked a few hundred feet away and opened the Find My app on my iPhone 17 Pro Max. I looked for the New AirTag first. I hit the Find button and then got to walking. My iPhone started picking it up 110 feet away. The green «you’re going the right way» screen with an arrow appeared 85 feet away from the new AirTag.

I repeated the test with the Patrick’s Luggage AirTag, and my iPhone started picking it up 42 feet away, and the green screen appeared 37 feet away. In this simple test, the second-gen AirTag was findable at over twice the distance away as my first-gen Apple tracker.

I should note that there are a lot of factors that come into play when trying to find your AirTag. Our range testing was done around lunchtime, so there were a lot of people with iPhones walking by to pick up the tag’s initial location so that my phone could use the Find My network to zero in on it. Also, we were outdoors along a walking path, so we didn’t have walls, rugs or furniture to contend with for the Precision Finding.

The new AirTag supports Precision Finding on the Apple Watch

The second-gen Ultra Wideband chip on the new AirTag also supports Precision Finding for the first time on certain Apple Watch models running WatchOS 26.2.1 or later:

Apple Watch Series 9
Apple Watch Series 10
Apple Watch Series 11
Apple Watch Ultra 2
Apple Watch Ultra 3

But getting it set up isn’t straightforward.

To use Precision Finding on the iPhone, you go to the Items tab in the Find My app and select your AirTag. But when I went to the Find Items app on the watch, I could select the new AirTag, but there wasn’t a Precision Finding option.

A quick online search later, I found an Apple Support page that explained how the Apple Watch uses the Control Center to do it. I had to add a new Find Items button, called Find AirTag, to the Control Center and then tap it to put my watch into Precision Finding mode. Indoors, it found my AirTag from 65 feet away. It might go farther, but our office isn’t that big.

My Apple Watch doesn’t have cellular data, so when I was indoors on Wi-Fi, it worked fantastic. When I was outdoors, connected to my iPhone, it worked mostly fine, but at times it took longer to update my AirTag’s location.

The new AirTag is louder

If you’ve ever used the AirTag’s Play Sound feature through the iPhone’s Find My app, you know that Apple «I’m over here» chime. The new AirTag plays the same tune but is higher-pitched and louder, making it easier to find.

I tested the second-gen AirTag’s chime against the first one using an iPhone audio meter app (not the most scientific, but I wanted to visualize the difference). The original AirTag’s chime peaked at 67.3 dBA, while the new AirTag’s hit 77.5 dBA, more than twice as loud as the old model (remember, decibels are logarithmic).

The new AirTag final thoughts

When I set out to test the AirTag, I was concerned there wouldn’t be much to talk about. But after my time with it, I’ve discovered a lot to share. Namely, I’m a fan. I was already a fan of the first one, and that’s the key. Apple kept all the best aspects of the original AirTag while adding slight improvements. There was no dramatic redesign or price increase. It’s just the familiar white and chrome disc that is a little louder, higher-pitched and easier to find from quite a bit farther away.

I know some people hoped Apple would launch a credit card-style AirTag or one in different colors. It seems that Apple is more than happy to have other companies do that and participate in its Works with Apple Find My program. And I’m OK with that, too.