How China fell for a lobster: What an AI assistant tells us about Beijing's ambition

How China fell for a lobster: What an AI assistant tells us about Beijing's ambitionJust nowShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleFan WangandYan ChenAFP via Getty ImagesAI agent OpenClaw sparked a frenzy in China in March, with users "raising lobsters" - training the tool to suit their needs"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 I was indeed human, 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...