The University of Helsinki has decided to prohibit the use of the OpenClaw application and similar personal autonomous agent platforms on centrally managed University of Helsinki devices as of 7 May 2026. The decision has been made due to ethical, information security and data protection reasons, as well as for risk management purposes.
The decision is based on significant risks arising from the application’s architecture and operating logic to research, teaching, the processing of personal data and the University’s entire IT infrastructure.
OpenClaw poses significant risks because of its operating logic and extensive access rights, especially in the processing of personal data and the use of the University’s non-public information. The level of risk exceeds the University’s accepted risk tolerance.
The ban also applies to similar personal agent platforms (e.g. IronClaw, ZeroClaw, Nanobot), because OpenClaw, as an open-source project, may change its name and appear as new versions.
Installations of OpenClaw have already been detected on centrally managed University of Helsinki devices, but no damage has been reported so far. However, interest in the application is growing.