The world is amazed by Moltbot (formerly Clawdbot). It turns out that China had already invented it almost a year ago

The phenomenon of the end of January has been Molbotformerly known as Clawdbot. It is one of the AI agents most powerful of the moment, to the point that it warns of its own risks even before being installed. An agent who seemed to have no competitor and to be one of a kind. We were wrong.

TARS-1.5. Although it has not made as much noise, in April 2025 it was launched UI-TARS-1.5an open source multimodal agent capable of performing all types of tasks within desktop environments. UI-TARS-1.5 is a multimodal agent designed to interact with the digital world through graphical interfaces, using the screen, mouse and keyboard.

It came into the hands of Bytedance, a company behind giants like TikTok and one of the main players in the development of artificial intelligence in China.

The difference. 1.5 is an AI agent designed to use a computer as a person would do. See the screen, identify visual elements and act using mouse and keyboard.

Unlike Moltbot, it does not execute code or commands directly on the system, but rather interacts with the PC from the outside, at the interface level. It’s safer by design, because you can’t break the system by running arbitrary code. In addition, it reasons before each action, which reduces errors accumulated in long tasks.

• UI-TARS does not control your computer. He uses it.
• Moltbot does not use your computer. He controls it.

What can you do? UI-TARS interacts “talking” with your computer. It is capable of executing tasks in our interface by analyzing what is in it.

• Serves as a programming assistant.
• It can behave like a human to test apps.
• It works as a tutor to perform complex tasks.
• You can manage desktop tasks and PC management.

Why is it important. The new war for AI will not focus exclusively on models like Gemini, ChatGPT or Claude: the next step is to achieve a local AI capable of acting like a human, but with certain security guarantees.

Moltbot, UI-TARS, Kimmi K2.5 (also Chinese)… Although agentic AI sounds distant, the war to make it part of our daily lives has been brewing for years.

Image | Xataka

In Xataka | Studying with AI without thinking teaches nothing: these tips can help you take advantage of it and really learn