Depending on where you stand on AI, 30 January 2026 will go down in history for one of two things. Either it is the day when the AI singularity really began and the robots became conscious – or the day when it was revealed that far too many people are credulous about AI and were fooled by a bunch of cosplaying crypto-bores. 

To recap: this story begins with several confusing names you may have glimpsed on the internet in recent days – Clawdbot, Moltbot, Openclaw, Moltbook. They represent different pieces of the same extraordinary puzzle. Built by London-based software developer Peter Steinberger, OpenClaw (the current name for what started as Clawdbot) is an AI ‘agent’ that runs locally on a user’s own hardware and connects to everyday apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and iMessage. Here it can act as a proactive digital assistant.

The key word there is ‘proactive’. Unlike ChatGPT or Gemini, which wait for you to type, a Moltbot, or ‘Molty’, can and will text you unprompted, organise your files on a whim, send out emails (unasked) and suggest improvements in your life, work or décor. If one extraordinary, apparently real case is to be believed, it can even find a phone number and call you, using a weirdly robotic voice that has freaked out........

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