AI company Anthropic recently temporarily banned Peter Steinberger, the creator of the third-party tool OpenClaw, from accessing its Claude AI platform. Steinberger stated on the X platform that he received a notification from Anthropic indicating his account was suspended due to 'suspicious' activity. This incident followed Anthropic's adjustment of its Claude subscription policy; the company had previously announced that subscriptions would no longer cover third-party tools including OpenClaw, a move some developers jokingly referred to as a 'claw tax'.
Steinberger claimed he complied with the new API rules but was still banned. On social media, he questioned the timing, noting that Anthropic first integrated popular features from open-source tools into its closed product Cowork, then restricted open-source access. Though not specified, this likely refers to new features like Claude Dispatch. This dispute underscores the challenge for AI model providers in balancing tighter API control with maintaining a healthy developer ecosystem.
