A hot potato: It shouldn't come as a surprise that fans of generative AI are pretty sensitive about the terminology and negativity surrounding it. OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger, for example, says that "vibe coding" is a slur used to make generating AI code sound easy. He added that using AI code editors is akin to learning how to play the guitar.
The term vibe coding is often used when developers rely heavily on AI tools to generate, modify, and refine code. The name comes from steering development by vibes while AI does much of the coding.
OpenClaw, a free AI agent that has been taking the internet by storm, was itself created using AI code editors by Steinberger – its original name of Clawdbot was a reference to Claude Code.
On OpenAI's Builders Unscripted, Steinberger said he doesn't appreciate the use of the phrase vibe coding as it has negative connotations. "There are these people that write software the old way, and the old way is going to go away," he said. "They call it 'vibe coding.' I think vibe coding is a slur."
"They don't understand that it's a skill," Steinberger added, comparing generating code using AI to learning to play the guitar.
Steinberger accepted a job with OpenAI earlier this month. He said in a post that while he could see how OpenClaw could become a huge company, "it's not really exciting for me."
"What I want is to change the world, not build a large company and teaming up with OpenAI is the fastest way to bring this to everyone," he wrote.
Vibe coding was Collins Word of the Year in 2025, but there are plenty of others who share Steinberger's view, including Google Brain's Andrew Ng and former Tesla AI chief Andrej Karpathy.
As the public's opinion of AI continues to sour against the backdrop of job losses, hardware shortages, and the environmental impact, there has been plenty of pushback from AI-loving big tech names.
In January, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang, whose company's hardware powers the AI industry, said the "doomer narrative" around the technology is "not helpful to society."
There was also Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who complained that the conversation around AI needs to move beyond "slop." Meanwhile, Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft's AI group, called public criticism of AI "mind-blowing" in November.
This week, OpenAI's Sam Altman complained about the constant criticism he hears over AI's energy use, arguing that it also takes a lot of energy to train a human.