“Are you a lobster?” is the first question Wang had for the BBC.
He had been so consumed recently by the AI assistant OpenClaw – which in China has earned the name “lobster” – that he wondered if he was talking to AI, rather than a journalist.
After being assured he was not, the young IT engineer explained how he had “fallen deep into” AI and, especially, OpenClaw.
Driven by encouragement from the very top of China’s leadership, the world’s second-biggest economy has embraced artificial intelligence, sparking both curiosity and concern.
OpenClaw, built by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger, is an example of how this is playing out.
Because it is built on open-source data and tech, the code is available to those who want to customise it to work with Chinese AI models. And that is a huge advantage, because Western models such as ChatGPT and Claude are not accessible in China.
So OpenClaw stirred up a frenzy as more people experimented with its code.
Wang was one of them. He did not want to share his full name because of his side gig running an online shop selling digital gadgets on TikTok, which is banned in China.
“Are you a lobster?” is the first question Wang had for the BBC.
He had been so consumed recently by the AI assistant OpenClaw – which in China has earned the name “lobster” – that he wondered if he was talking to AI, rather than a journalist.
After being assured he was not, the young IT engineer explained how he had “fallen deep into” AI and, especially, OpenClaw.
Driven by encouragement from the very top of China’s leadership, the world’s second-biggest economy has embraced artificial intelligence, sparking both curiosity and concern.
OpenClaw, built by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger, is an example of how this is playing out.
Because it is built on open-source data and tech, the code is available to those who want to customise it to work with Chinese AI models. And that is a huge advantage, because Western models such as ChatGPT and Claude are not accessible in China.
So OpenClaw stirred up a frenzy as more people experimented with its code.
Wang was one of them. He did not want to share his full name because of his side gig running an online shop selling digital gadgets on TikTok, which is banned in China.
When he first saw what his “lobster” – built on OpenClaw’s code and altered for his use – could do, he said he was stunned.
Uploading products to the TikTok Shop is a grind: adding images, writing titles and descriptions, setting prices and discounts, signing up for campaigns, and messaging influencers. Usually he can manage about a dozen listings a day.
His “lobster”, which he was still testing, can do up to 200 in just two minutes, he claimed. “It is scary, but also exciting. My lobster is better than I am at this. It writes better, and can instantly compare my prices with every competitor – something I would never have time to do.”
OpenClaw had already exploded in the global tech community – Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called it “the next ChatGPT” and its developer Steinberger recently joined OpenAI.
But the enthusiasm that turned OpenClaw into something “trendy” was “uniquely Chinese”, said Wendy Chang, from the MERICS think-tank.
Wang called OpenClaw “the AI era’s answer for ordinary people”.
Chinese tech giants seemed to agree because they were releasing apps built on OpenClaw. From the southern tech hub of Shenzhen to the capital of Beijing, hundreds of people – from secondary school students to retirees – were lining up outside the headquarters of Tencent and Baidu for free customised versions.
Many were curious to find out more about the “lobsters”. Some users online said they used them to invest in stocks, claiming their “lobsters” analysed the best times to buy and sell, and even did the deed, despite the risk of costly errors. Others said the tools were great for multi-tasking and saving time.
Famous comedian and author Li Dan told millions of his followers on Douyin that he was so immersed in OpenClaw that he talked to his lobster in his dreams. Fu Sheng, chief executive of Cheetah Mobile, relentlessly shared how he “raised his lobster” on social media – a phrase users adopted to describe training the assistant for their requirements.
China’s AI moment has been in the making for some time.
When the Chinese app DeepSeek burst onto the AI scene early last year, it seemed to catch a lot of people by surprise. It was also an open-source platform, developed by home-grown engineers from elite Chinese universities. And it came on the back of years of investments in developing crucial technology, including AI – which has only continued in the wake of DeepSeek’s success.
What DeepSeek showed was the Chinese entrepreneurial appetite for seeking out opportunities in research and innovation, despite curbs on the import of advanced tech. And it also proved how eagerly people were willing to adopt open-source platforms.
So the stage was set for OpenClaw.
Its popularity did not escape the Chinese government. Several counties and cities provided incentives to encourage entrepreneurs to apply OpenClaw in their businesses – the eastern city of Wuxi offered up to five million yuan ($726,000; £549,000) for manufacturing-related applications, such as robots.
“Everyone in China knows that the government sets the pace, and the government tells you where the opportunities are,” said Rui Ma, founder of the Tech Buzz China newsletter. “It’s practical for most people. That’s probably a better plan, to just follow the government directive than to really try to figure it out on your own.”