Recently, AI company Anthropic temporarily banned Peter Steinberger, the creator of the open-source tool OpenClaw, from accessing its AI model Claude. According to TechCrunch, Steinberger shared on platform X a notice from Anthropic stating his account was suspended for "suspicious" activity. This incident occurred after Anthropic announced last week that its Claude subscription service would no longer cover usage through third-party tools, including OpenClaw. The company stated users would need to pay extra fees, a change dubbed the "claw tax" by the developer community.
Steinberger responded that he had complied with the new rules by using the API, yet his account was still banned. In his post, he suggested that Anthropic might have integrated popular features from OpenClaw into its own closed-source agent, Claude Dispatch, for remote task control, before moving to sideline the open-source ecosystem. Although no specific features were named, this has sparked discussions about the strained relationship between AI platforms and third-party developers. Notably, Steinberger is currently employed by OpenAI, a competitor of Anthropic, adding complexity to the situation.
