OpenClaw: China’s latest tech obsession could be a game changer

Taipei / Beijing —

At China’s hot new tech events, lobsters are everywhere –– lobster balloons, lobster headbands, lobster plushies in claw machines, even live lobsters in an inflatable kiddie pool.

But the attendees swarming the meet-ups are not here for the crustaceans –– they’re here for the new technology they represent: OpenClaw, an autonomous artificial intelligence tool, which can be programmed to run tasks nonstop with full control of the user’s device.

Rather than a simple question-and-answer format like most AI chatbots, OpenClaw uses the same underlying technology to independently operate apps, web browsers or smart home appliances based on commands via commonly used messaging apps like WhatsApp.

Created by Austrian programmer Peter Steinberger and released in November, the free AI agent has been hailed as a new way to supercharge productivity. Jensen Huang, CEO of the US chip giant Nvidia, has called it “the next ChatGPT” and “the most popular open-source project in the history of humanity.”

In China, OpenClaw has received a particularly fervent welcome among AI enthusiasts and novices alike. According to analysis of global public networks by SecurityScorecard, a New York-based cybersecurity firm, China has more OpenClaw users than any other country, with about double the activity of the US, which has next-largest base of users.

Both tech companies and local communities have organized gatherings for “lobster-farming” –– a popular phrase in China for adopting OpenClaw –– with some drawing as many as 1,000 participants in major cities. On Chinese e-commerce sites, technical experts sell OpenClaw installation and configuration services for anywhere between $7 and $100.

The hype around…

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