{"id":539968,"date":"2026-03-14T13:00:39","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T13:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/539968\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T13:00:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T13:00:39","slug":"ai-agent-lobster-fever-grips-china-despite-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/539968\/","title":{"rendered":"AI agent ‘lobster fever’ grips China despite risks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chinese entrepreneur Frank Gao used to spend long hours running his social media accounts, but now outsources the chore to AI agent<\/a> tool OpenClaw<\/a>, which is taking the country by storm despite official warnings over cybersecurity.<\/p>\n

OpenClaw, created in November by an Austrian coder, differs from bots like ChatGPT because it can execute real-life tasks such as sending emails, organising files or even booking flight tickets.<\/p>\n

“Since January, I’ve spent hours on the lobster every day,” Gao told AFP, referring to OpenClaw’s red crustacean mascot. “We’re family.”<\/p>\n

After downloading OpenClaw, users connect it to existing artificial intelligence models of their choice, then give it simple instructions through instant messaging apps, as if to a friend or colleague.<\/p>\n

The tool has fascinated tech circles worldwide but particularly in China, gripping tech-savvy companies and individuals keen to keep up with the next big thing in AI.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of people queued at tech giant Baidu<\/a>‘s Beijing headquarters this week for an OpenClaw event where engineers helped attendees set up their “little lobsters”.<\/p>\n

It was one of many similar meetups to experiment with the tool, which are drawing crowds from Shanghai to Shenzhen.<\/p>\n

Some municipalities, including the eastern cities of Wuxi and Hangzhou, have pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the adoption and development of OpenClaw and other AI agents.<\/p>\n

But the lobster fever<\/a>, as it has been dubbed, has also sparked security concerns.<\/p>\n

“What’s truly scary about agents like OpenClaw is this: once they have your digital keys, they can theoretically access all the services you’ve authorised, and can autonomously decide when to activate them,” Gao warned.<\/p>\n

“The attacker effectively gains a ‘master key’ to your digital identity<\/a>,” said the engineer, who has named his OpenClaw agent “Q” after his business name QLab.<\/p>\n

‘Use with caution’
Chinese national cybersecurity authorities and Beijing’s ministry of industry and IT have warned of the risks of OpenClaw hacks.<\/p>\n

“Use intelligent agents such as ‘lobster’ with caution,” national IT research institute expert Wei Liang advised government agencies, public institutions, companies and individuals in a message on state media.<\/p>\n

The mixed signals of rolling out policy incentives while issuing warnings “reflects the authorities’ cautious tolerance towards ‘lobster fever’,” Zhang Yi, founder of tech consultancy iiMedia, told AFP.<\/p>\n

Austrian programmer Peter Steinberger, who built OpenClaw to help organise his digital life, was hired last month by ChatGPT maker OpenAI.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a separate team of coders that made Moltbook, a Reddit-like pseudo social network where OpenClaw agents converse, are joining Meta.<\/p>\n

Top Chinese tech companies have also been quick to get involved.<\/p>\n

The likes of Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance and Baidu are offering simplified installation and affordable coding plans to help users who want to host OpenClaw agents on their cloud servers — seen as safer than downloading it onto a personal computer.<\/p>\n

In recent days AI companies big and small have also launched their own competing agent tools, such as ByteDance’s ArkClaw, Tencent’s WorkBuddy and Zhipu AI’s AutoClaw.<\/p>\n

The relatively low cost for cloud deployment<\/a> of OpenClaw in China, subsidised by big tech firms, is one factor behind its popularity, said Gao Rui, a senior product manager at Baidu AI Cloud.<\/p>\n

“For most people, it’s likely just the price of a cup of coffee… which is why people will probably be keen to give it a try,” she told AFP.<\/p>\n

FOMO
Fear of missing out is also a big driver behind OpenClaw’s success in China, said Chen Yunfei, an AI developer who created a popular online guide for using the tool.<\/p>\n

“Most Chinese people are quite studious and forward-looking, so when confronted with new things, they might have stronger feelings” of so-called FOMO, he said.<\/p>\n

Xie Manrui, a programmer whose latest project is a visualised system for managing OpenClaw agents, said the tool had arrived “at the right moment” to change perceptions in China of what AI can do.<\/p>\n

“For many, AI is merely a clever chatbot that talks all the time but cannot act,” he said.<\/p>\n

Either way, it has piqued the curiosity of many young users.<\/p>\n

At the Baidu event in Beijing, 24-year-old college student Zheng Huimin was waiting patiently in line with her friends.<\/p>\n

“I’d like to give it a go to see what tasks it can actually help me accomplish,” she told AFP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chinese entrepreneur Frank Gao used to spend long hours running his social media accounts, but now outsources the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[8667,267655,64,63,40165,99,267652,267654,267651,224005,164,267653,267650,246068],"class_list":["post-539968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-ai-agent","tag-ai-tools-competition","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-baidu","tag-business","tag-china-ai-technology","tag-cloud-deployment","tag-cybersecurity-risks","tag-digital-identity","tag-economy","tag-gpt-3-alternatives","tag-lobster-fever","tag-openclaw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}