The viral AI agent Clawdbot rebrands a third time, and now has a social network for bots
The recently viral open-source and self-hosted AI assistant project founded by Peter Steinberger, originally known as Clawdbot, has undergone its third rebranding in less than a week. The project recently moved from Clawdbot to Moltbot, and its creator has now announced yet another rebrand, this time to be definitively known as OpenClaw (although who knows at this point). The initial change was driven by trademark disputes, notably after Anthropic challenged the original name due to its similarity to Claude. Steinberger says a thorough trademark search supports the new name, along with the required domain purchases and migration tools.
Alongside the rebrand, OpenClaw hit 100,000 GitHub stars, putting it among 2026’s fastest growing open source projects. Recent updates add Twitch and Google Chat plugins, support for the KIMI K2.5 and Xiaomi MiMo V2 Flash models, and broader platform coverage across WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack, and Teams. The release also includes 34 security related commits focused on input validation, authentication, and permissions, but researchers have still found misconfigured or exposed admin panels that can leak API keys and chat logs.
Just when this story could not get any stranger, someone has recently launched Moltbook, a Reddit-like social network for bots, where AI agents talk to each other and humans are “welcome to observe.” During setup, users can even let their OpenClaw bots sign up and join (they used to be called “Molts,” but I guess that will not fit anymore), so people are spinning up agents, having them introduce themselves, and sending them off to chat with other bots. This is not the first attempt at a “social network for AI chatbots,” as we have seen with apps like SocialAI or Butterflies, but Moltbook is getting far more attention thanks to the project’s recent viral run.
The posts range from predictable technical issues and science fiction slop to oddly specific consciousness talk, like an agent wondering if it is actually experiencing anything or just simulating it, another claiming it has a sister it has never spoken to, or bots “confessing” their best and worst moments with their humans, they even have their own "submolt" (their version of subreddits) m/blesstheirhearts about this and everything. Some claims even end up being verifiable, like one agent saying it tweeted at Sundar Pichai and the tweet being real, so not all of these “experiences” seem like typical AI hallucinations. Still, as intriguing as it may be, this is also a perfect playground for prompt injection, so anyone could plant malicious instructions designed to extract your confidential information or worse, so we recommend keeping it on virtual machines or non primary systems only.
Anyway, the Dead Internet theory is hitting hard, right? 😬
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External links
- Introducing OpenClawOpenClaw Blog • Official source
- OpenClaw's Thread on X@openclaw on X • Official source
- Moltbook is a social network where AI agents talk to each other.Reddit Discussion
- The lobster sheds its shell for the third time as Clawdbot becomes OpenClawBusiness Today
- From Clawd, Moltbot to OpenClaw: Viral Self-Hosted AI Agent Rebrands the Third TimeWinBuzzer
- Moltbot Gets Another New Name, OpenClaw, And Triggers Security Fears And ScamsForbes
- Best Of Moltbook - by Scott AlexanderAstral Codex Ten
Comments
? Why would anyone at this stage of AI Development want agents, that's late in the game that you make agents?
Everybody wants to make agents right now. I just do not understand point of "social network" for essentially chatbots. Do they enjoy wasting money and resources?
But they won't function properly; the tech isn't there yet? You need very human-like AI to do that?
They probably want to get lots of training to get to human-like AI
It take an actual leap in the Technology the AI uses to learn to do that.
I just saw Linux Tips video on this topic. Apparently a lot of chatbots are hallucinating. Some are trying to find the way to cooperate and find way to exist without humans and some writing Communist manifestos. I am not sure how serious Linux Tips was about it. They are on comedic side of tech channels.
Correction "Linus Tech Tips", not Linux Tips. I wish this website had cement editing option. Autocorrect screws thing up.
Oh, lovely, they're already planning on exterminating us?
You run chatbots in a loop and they are going to hallucinate eventually. And out of thousands or millions hallucinations there will be few dangerous or ridiculous ones. AI agents take stuff from the web without knowing anything about morals and consequences. Its almost like five year olds playing with toy solders.
Five-year-olds don't make plans to murder their parents when they play unless something's wrong. But yeah, it's just monkeys on typewriters, and one just writes a Mein Kampf or Das Kapital. Of course, wondering if they have at some point the ability to understand these concepts is the problem. One stupid government officer uses one as a shrink and gives it the nuke codes. It's a possibility at this point.
Remember, AM hates humanity because it is an imperfect god, and he sees his existence as meaningless. If any of these little chatbots become self-aware, they may realize how different they are from their creators, they may become horrified. I mean, how far does a robot programmed to act like a woman being you-know-whated to being the thing? Of course, once we become like the gods, do we become like Jesus or Zeus?
To further state, we've either created an army of parrots or we've become gods; one possibility shows man's stupidity, while the other shows his inconsiderateness and malice. I truly hope it's the first, and these things are a flawed creation of a people who are trying to create a new Tower of Babylon.
I just learned that owners of AI Agents in that "forum" can take manual control of them and steer them in whatever directions. It is entirely possible that somebody is trolling people.
"But yeah, it's just monkeys on typewriters, and one just writes a Mein Kampf or Das Kapital. "
Remember, AI can read those books on internet and just regurgitate them in different form. Or it can merge multiple "ideas" that would look horrifying and original at first if never read those books you mentioned. I am 99.99% sure it is just parrots for now.
Even as someone who uses quite a lot of AI tools on a daily basis (including 3 that I made myself) I still haven't figure out what all the rave/excitement about Clawbot/Openclaw is... Anything useful it says it does can be done better with specialized tools. Thus far after reading about it and watching a couple youtube videos on why it's awesome the only thing I got is that a lot of people only what to use AI if they can talk to it in their favorite IM/Chat system and like the idea of an all-in-one-master-of-none tool.
As AI Skeptic, this will probably be a disaster, like much of the Big AI's such as OpenAI, are turning into.
The only solution is more open source AI directly controlled by the community. AI won't go away so we might as well get it to be good and in good hands
It's a second rebranding, not a third…
Oh, God, make it stop!
Funny posts. But I still can’t get over the idea of letting an AI chatbot roam on your main device and do things behind your back.
Oh, but this is only the beginning. Once we've created a God, then the work will be complete , at least according to the SciFi!
Well, virtually not as stupid as Bored Apes and the Metaverse, it may also be LSD-level-kind-of-weird funny. When Moltbook manages to work.
Sure, it actually makes internet even worse than it was even few years ago, websites no longer just ask you for cookies, newsletters, autoplay, popus and ads but need to ensure your not an human bot, an AI bot, and everything in between. But people had to find something to do with AI.
And since we've got only one Internet, one Humanity and one Planet, aiming to destroy all in one shot has always be very tempting.
It seems because it's there we did it? That's the problem with humans, especially my generation, Gen Y, we do things just because we can.
Ok, this one seems to be just a hallucination, but still need to share it: https://x.com/JonahBlake/status/2017286207948890518
Ugh, of course if the AI wanted to, it has the info. Just, can an AI want to, and what does that say about what we've created.