- Moltbot is the newly rebranded open source AI assistant, Clawdbot
- Moltbot operates within messaging apps to perform tasks
- The rebranding followed a trademark warning and set off a wave of chaos, stolen identifiers and fake crypto scams.
A promising open source artificial intelligence assistant called Clawdbot became a viral sensation before a hasty name change to Moltbot over potential branding concerns sparked an avalanche of attempted scams and fraud.
After the chatbot reached tens of thousands of GitHub stars and attracted praise from high-profile AI researchers and investors, Anthropic expressed concern that its name sounded too similar to the company’s chatbot, Claude.
Moltbot’s developer, Austrian engineer Peter Steinberger, chose the new name after hearing from Anthropic. He pulled the trigger in the middle of the night, but that didn’t stop bots from instantly grabbing abandoned social handles or opportunists from launching fake “Clawdbot” crypto tokens. The sleep-deprived Steinberger even accidentally renamed his personal GitHub account instead of the project before fixing the error.
There is a reason for all the chaos. Moltbot’s central argument of an AI that the average person can use to organize their digital life has obvious appeal. Its design is supposed to make it behave more like people imagined an AI assistant a decade ago, before they were trained to lower their expectations. It exists within the tools you already use and promises to handle the tasks you keep putting off.
Moltbot runs locally, the user chooses an AI model to power it, and communicates via standard messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, iMessage, and Slack. It keeps a long-term record of your preferences, projects, and conversation history. If you say you want to start a diet, remember it. If you asked him to track a habit last week, he’ll remind you today. If you juggle multiple projects between applications and services, it can help automate them.
This integration is what sets the tool apart from typical AI chatbots. You can tell Moltbot to summarize your inbox, archive documents, organize your notes, generate reports, or alert you when deadlines are approaching, and it can interact with third-party apps.
moltbot mania
When the project was first launched under the name Clawdbot, it seemed like a much easier way to achieve the type of agent AI that companies like OpenAI and Google have been discussing. Interest mushroomed, and suddenly people were talking about a small open source side project as the prototype for a new era of personal automation.
Then came the name change request. And with it, a kind of digital antics routine. Within seconds of Steinberger announcing the rebrand, robots pounced on the old name. An unrelated crypto token calling itself $CLAWD appeared almost immediately and skyrocketed to a comical market cap before crashing.
The fraudulent accounts claimed to be part of the engineering team. And a widely shared image of a lobster with a human face, created when Steinberger jokingly asked Moltbot to “age up” his pet, was taken for real by many people for a time.
But people love badass projects that try to survive their own sudden fame. They also love a mascot with meme potential. Not that Moltbot is for everyone. Because AI can, with permission, control parts of your computer and access sensitive personal data, it is recommended that you exercise caution and do not install third-party add-ons without examining them.
For most non-technical AI chatbot users, Moltbot is more of an omen than a tool to use right now. Large technology companies have been publicly pursuing the dream of “AI agents” for months. Moltbot is one of the first real examples that the public can touch, even if most people don’t implement it on their own machines. It hints at a future where digital assistants not only answer questions but actively maintain your calendar, prioritize your messages, and coordinate your digital life. The lobster pet is optional.
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