My Bot Got Banned for Being a Bot

A personal experiment with an AI agent (Openclaw) led to a Google account being disabled for bot-like behavior. The author reflects on the broader industry challenge of distinguishing legitimate personal AI agents from malicious bots. Current fraud prevention heuristics—captchas, phone verification, bot detection—treat agents the same as bots, blocking legitimate use. The author argues the industry needs to shift from detecting 'is this a bot' to detecting 'is this doing bad things,' and that platforms must build proper standards for agent identity and authentication or risk becoming irrelevant as personal agents become mainstream.