Moltbot briefly becomes the internet’s favorite AI chatbot after chaotic rebrand

• Moltbot is the recently rebranded open-source AI assistant Clawdbot
• Moltbot operates inside messaging apps to perform tasks
• The rebrand followed a trademark warning and triggered a wave of chaos, stolen handles, and fake crypto scams

A promising open-source AI assistant called Clawdbot transformed into a viral sensation before a hasty rebrand to Moltbot over potential trademark concerns led to a deluge of attempted scams and fraud.

After the chatbot surged to tens of thousands of GitHub stars and attracted praise from high-profile AI researchers and investors, Anthropic raised trademark concerns that its name sounded too similar to the company’s chatbot, Claude.

Moltbot’s developer, Austrian engineer Peter Steinberger, chose the new name after hearing from Anthropic. He pulled the trigger in the middle of the night, but that didn’t prevent bots from instantly grabbing abandoned social handles or opportunists from pumping out fake “Clawdbot” crypto ...