Google restricts Antigravity users tied to suspicious OpenClaw behaviour
“We’ve been seeing a massive increase in malicious usage of the Anitgravity backend that has tremendously degraded the quality of service for our users,” said Google's Varun Mohan.
- Feb 23, 2026,
- Updated Feb 23, 2026 3:50 PM IST
Google has reportedly restricted some users from its specialised AI coding assistant, Antigravity and Gemini AI Ultra subscribers. These users were reportedly using Gemini AI models from accounts linked to the open-source coding agent framework, OpenClaw. Users were found violating Google’s policies, with alleged use cases involving harmful, abusive, or unauthorised activities.
The restriction has raised questions among Gemini users on whether companies can independently decide who gets access to these tools. Since AI tools have become a core part of day-to-day work like coding, research, and business, such decisions directly influence users’ productivity.
In response to the ban, OpenClaw’s Peter Steinberger has publicly criticised the decision online, calling it a “draconian” move. In X post, he said, “Pretty draconian from Google. Be careful out there if you use Antigravity. I guess I'll remove support. Even Anthropic pings me and is nice about issues. Google just... bans?”
On the other hand, Varun Mohan, former Windsurf CEO and Google DeepMind engineer, in a X post noted that “We’ve been seeing a massive increase in malicious usage of the Anitgravity backend that has tremendously degraded the quality of service for our users.” He also clarified that the restrictions applied only to OpenClaw users were imposed because of misuse of the Antigravity backend.
“We needed to find a path to quickly shut off access to these users that are not using the product as intended. We understand that a subset of these users were not aware that this was against our ToS and will get a path for them to come back on, but we have limited capacity and want to be fair to our actual users,” Mohan said.
Previously, Anthropic also updated its consumer terms, banning OAuth tokens in external tools, including OpenClaw. The AI tool has been under scrutiny for some time, as its open-source AI agent reportedly brings several security risks.
While the OpenClaw framework comes with concerns for security, OpenAI hired the creator, Peter Steinberger. OpenAI's Sam Altman said Steinberger will “drive the next generation of personal agents.” This highlights that, despite the controversy, his technical expertise is seen as valuable in shaping future AI agent systems.
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Google has reportedly restricted some users from its specialised AI coding assistant, Antigravity and Gemini AI Ultra subscribers. These users were reportedly using Gemini AI models from accounts linked to the open-source coding agent framework, OpenClaw. Users were found violating Google’s policies, with alleged use cases involving harmful, abusive, or unauthorised activities.
The restriction has raised questions among Gemini users on whether companies can independently decide who gets access to these tools. Since AI tools have become a core part of day-to-day work like coding, research, and business, such decisions directly influence users’ productivity.
In response to the ban, OpenClaw’s Peter Steinberger has publicly criticised the decision online, calling it a “draconian” move. In X post, he said, “Pretty draconian from Google. Be careful out there if you use Antigravity. I guess I'll remove support. Even Anthropic pings me and is nice about issues. Google just... bans?”
On the other hand, Varun Mohan, former Windsurf CEO and Google DeepMind engineer, in a X post noted that “We’ve been seeing a massive increase in malicious usage of the Anitgravity backend that has tremendously degraded the quality of service for our users.” He also clarified that the restrictions applied only to OpenClaw users were imposed because of misuse of the Antigravity backend.
“We needed to find a path to quickly shut off access to these users that are not using the product as intended. We understand that a subset of these users were not aware that this was against our ToS and will get a path for them to come back on, but we have limited capacity and want to be fair to our actual users,” Mohan said.
Previously, Anthropic also updated its consumer terms, banning OAuth tokens in external tools, including OpenClaw. The AI tool has been under scrutiny for some time, as its open-source AI agent reportedly brings several security risks.
While the OpenClaw framework comes with concerns for security, OpenAI hired the creator, Peter Steinberger. OpenAI's Sam Altman said Steinberger will “drive the next generation of personal agents.” This highlights that, despite the controversy, his technical expertise is seen as valuable in shaping future AI agent systems.
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