OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI, Sam Altman says will drive next-gen AI personal agents
OpenAI chief Sam Altman announced on February 15 that OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger will join the company. In a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Altman said Steinberger will “drive the next generation of products.”
“Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to lead the next generation of personal agents. He is a genius with many amazing ideas about the future of very intelligent agents that interact with each other to do very useful things for people. We hope this will soon become the foundation of our product offerings,” Altman wrote.
What is OpenClaw?
OpenClaw is a popular open source artificial intelligence program created by Steinberger. The project, previously known as Clawdbot and Moltbot, has gained a large fan base since its launch in November.
Its ability to operate autonomously, clearing users’ inboxes, making restaurant reservations and checking in flights, among other tasks, has made headlines, according to a Bloomberg report.
He added that users can also connect the vehicle to messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Slack and direct the agent through these platforms.
According to Altman, “OpenClaw will live on a foundation as an open source project that OpenAI will continue to support. The future will be extremely multi-agent, and it’s important for us to support open source as part of that.”
Why switch to OpenAI?
In a separate post on its website on Saturday, Steinberger wrote that he was joining OpenAI to “be part of and continue to advance the frontiers of AI research and development.”
“It has always been important to me that OpenClaw remain open source and be given the freedom to evolve,” Steinberger wrote. “Ultimately, I felt OpenAI was the best place to continue advancing my vision and expanding its reach.”
“My next task is to create an agent that even my mother can use,” Steinberger wrote. “This will require much broader change, more thought about how to do this safely, and access to the latest models and research.”
Concerns over ‘rogue’ AI personal agents
The move comes amid growing security concerns about OpenClaw after a user reported that the agent had gone “rogue” and spammed hundreds of messages after being granted access to iMessage. Cybersecurity experts warn that the tool is risky because it has access to private data, can communicate with outsiders, and is exposed to untrusted content; one researcher called artificial intelligence the “deadly trinity.”
(With input from Bloomberg)
