Exploitation controversée de la folie d'IA OpenClaw en Chine

Feng Qingyang had always hoped to launch his own company, but he never thought this would be how—or that the day would come this fast. Feng, a 27-year-old software engineer based in Beijing, started tinkering with OpenClaw, a popular new open-source AI tool that can take over a device and autonomously complete tasks for a user, in January. He was immediately hooked, and before long he was helping other curious tech workers with less technical proficiency install the AI agent. Feng soon realized this could be a lucrative opportunity. By the end of January, he had set up a page on Xianyu, a secondhand shopping site, advertising “OpenClaw installation support.” “No need to know coding or complex terms. Fully remote,” reads the posting. “Anyone can quickly own an AI assistant, available within 30 minutes.” At the same time, the broader Chinese public was beginning to catch on—and the tool, which had begun as a niche interest among tech workers, started to evolve into a popular sensation. Feng quickly became inundated with requests, and he started chatting with customers and managing orders late into the night. At the end of February, he quit his job. Now his side gig has now grown into a full-fledged professional operation with over 100 employees. So far, the store has handled 7,000 orders, each worth about 248 RMB or approximately $34. “Opportunities are always fleeting,” says Feng. “As programmers, we are the first to feel the winds shift.” Feng is among a small cohort of savvy early adopters turning China’s OpenClaw craze into cash. As users with little technical background want in, a cottage industry of people offering installation services and preconfigured hardware has sprung up to meet them. The sudden rise of these tinkerers and impromptu consultants shows just how eager the general public in China is to adopt cutting-edge AI—even when there are huge security risks . A “lobster craze” “Have you raised a lobster yet?” Xie Manrui, a 36-year-old software engineer in Shenzhen, says he has heard this question nonstop over the past month. “Lobster” is the nickname Chinese users have given to OpenClaw—a reference to its logo. Xie, like Feng, has been experimenting with OpenClaw since January. He’s built new open-source tools on top of the ecosystem, including one that visualizes the agent’s progress as an animated little desktop worker and another that lets users voice-chat with it. “I’ve met so many new people through ‘lobster raising,’” says Xie. “Many are lawyers or doctors, with little technical background, but all dedicated to learning new things.” Lobsters are indeed popping up everywhere in China right now—on and offline. In February, for instance, the entrepreneur and tech influencer Fu Sheng hosted a livestream showing off OpenClaw’s capabilities that got 20,000 views. And just last weekend, Xie attended three different OpenClaw events in Shenzhen, each drawing more than 500 people. These self-organized, unofficial gatherings feature power users, influencers, and sometimes venture capitalists as speakers. The biggest event Xie attended, on March 7, drew more than 1,000 people; in the packed venue, he says, people were shoulder to shoulder, with many attendees unable to even get a seat. Now China’s AI giants are starting to piggyback on the trend too, promoting their models, APIs, and cloud services (which can be used with OpenClaw), as well as their own OpenClaw-like agents. Earlier this month, Tencent held a public event offering free installation support for OpenClaw, drawing long lines of people waiting for help, including elderly users and children. This sudden burst in popularity has even prompted local governments to get involved. Earlier this month the government of Longgang, a district in Shenzhen, released several policies to support OpenClaw-related ventures, including free computing credits and cash rewards for standout projects. Other cities, including Wuxi, have begun rolling out similar measures. These policies only catalyze what’s already in the air. “It was not until my father, who is 77, asked me to help install a ‘lobster’ for him that I realized this thing is truly viral,” says Henry Li, a software engineer based in Beijing. A programmer gold rush What’s making this moment particularly lucrative for people with technical skills, like Feng, is that so many people want OpenClaw, but not nearly as many have the capabilities to access it. Setting it up requires a level of technical knowledge most people do not possess, from typing commands into a black terminal window to navigating unfamiliar developer platforms. On the hardware side, an older or budget laptop may struggle to run it smoothly. And if the tool is not installed on a device separate from someone’s everyday computer, or if the data accessible to OpenClaw is not properly partitioned, the user’s privacy could be at risk—opening the door to data leaks and even malicious attacks. Chris Zhao, known as “Qi Shifu” online,