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The tech industry remains obsessed with finding the “next ChatGPT.”
Even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is on the hunt for this next AI breakthrough – and he feels like he’s caught something with OpenClaw.
Breakthroughs, however, are easier to declare than to actually deliver.
Image credit: Made by Miguel Cordon/Tech in Asia with the help of AI
OpenClaw, the open-source platform made by Peter Steinberger, an Austrian developer, allows users to create an agent that’s more powerful but more invasive than chatbots, as it can read and write files, run tools, and manage calendars, among other uses.
It has generated significant market attention so far, but its current version raises more questions than answers.
Peter Saddington, founder and general partner at StaaS Fund, for example, used OpenClaw (then known as Clawdbot) to schedule his workflow, create mini-apps, and automate his social media presence.
But he had concerns about the security of the platform, as it had access to his Gmail, social media, and Slack credentials – giving the agent free rein over his online identity. He also noted how easy it was to target the bot with cyberattacks like prompt injection.
And with security researchers finding over 40,000 instances in the wild of OpenClaw leaking API keys, chat histories, and account credentials, the safety concerns are warranted.
But with Nvidia’s help, OpenClaw could be moving toward enterprise use. The US tech giant recently unveiled NemoClaw, a software tool that lets companies create a safer OpenClaw agent build. But the risks of OpenClaw are still apparent.
Its utility remains largely unproven, too. While it functions well in controlled demonstrations, its reliability when integrated into actual business workflows, with real dollars and cents at stake, is yet to be seen.
Closer to home, the AI hype is also spreading across Southeast Asia.
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