Your mom probably doesn’t have OpenClaw in her group chat yet. Mark Zuckerberg knows that.
AI agents are having a bit of a time. Technologists wear lobster hats to meetups, and companies hire AI employees. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is excited about this progress, but says many agents still don’t have enough access.
Zuckerberg said during Meta’s first-quarter earnings call that many of its existing agents fail one important test.
“There are a lot of agents out there,” he said. “There aren’t that many things I want to give my mother.”
While these other agents offer a “very exciting glimpse” of what might be possible in the future, he said, they have one big drawback: They are difficult to use.
Zuckerberg specifically pointed to OpenClaw. Users must install the computer locally, access a terminal on the computer, and configure the system to use the AI agent. Meta is aimed at the masses, he said, although there are “a small number of millions of people” in the world who have completed their setups.
“How can we create a more sophisticated, easy-to-dial version of that experience?” Zuckerberg asked. The agents they’re looking at are “doing well,” he says.
Mr. Zuckerberg said it’s less about meeting a specific launch deadline and more about passing the informal “mom” test — the test of whether mothers can use the products recommended to them.
During the conference call, Zuckerberg also gave a glimpse of his position on investing resources in developing coding agents.
Meta’s competitors have invested heavily in competing coding agencies. OpenAI and Anthropic have Codex and Claude Code. SpaceX, which owns xAI, has signed a $60 billion deal for the rights to acquire AI coding startup Cursor.
Zuckerberg didn’t oppose building a coding agent, but said Meta is “not necessarily” a developer tools company. However, that is not the main focus of the meta.
“People confuse coding and self-improvement more than they need to,” he says. “Coding is one of the things that allows models to self-improve, but it’s not the only thing.”