Google has restricted select Antigravity users after identifying suspicious behavior connected to OpenClaw, marking a firm step in AI platform oversight. The restriction has raised questions among Gemini users on whether companies can independently decide who gets access to these tools.
Varun Mohan, co-founder of Windsurf and now a DeepMind engineer, said the account bans stemmed from malicious use, though customers argue that this is a mischaracterization of what they were doing.
"We've been seeing a massive increase in malicious usage of the Antigravity backend that has tremendously degraded the quality of service for our users," he explained in a social media post on Sunday.
"We needed to find a path to quickly shut off access to these users who are not using the product as intended. We understand that a subset of these users were not aware that this was against our [Terms of Service] and will get a path for them to come back on, but we have limited capacity and want to be fair to our actual users."
Mohan went on to clarify that Google has blocked usage of Antigravity but not other Google services.
"It is not intended to use the Antigravity backend as a proxy for other products, and users in these groups have overwhelmed our compute," he explained. "We are going to make sure we bring people back on but needed to act fast to make sure we deliver a good experience for people using the product."
Since AI tools have become a core part of day-to-day work, such as coding, research, and business, these decisions directly influence users’ productivity.
Many software developers who subscribe to these AI services have expressed surprise in various discussion threads. They claimed that they were unaware that their actions violated contractual agreements that they had most likely not read.
"Users paid for a quota, used the quota within limits, and got banned," said AI engineer Mohan Prakash in a social media post. "That's not malicious, that's using the product you sold them. The real issue is the [Terms of Service] doesn't explicitly ban OpenClaw integration, so users assumed it was allowed. If you don't want harness integration, return an error like Anthropic does—this usage pattern is not permitted. Banning paying customers without warning is how you lose trust faster than you lose capacity."
In response to the ban, OpenClaw’s Peter Steinberger publicly criticised the decision online, calling it a “draconian” move. In an X post, he said, “Pretty draconian from Google. Be careful out there if you use Antigravity. I guess I'll remove support. Even Anthropic pings me and is nice about issues. Google just... bans?”
Also Read: Google Restricts Gemini AI Ultra Accounts Over OpenClaw OAuth Access
Google customers paying US$250 per month for AI Ultra subscriptions and less extravagant spenders have been surprised to find their accounts suspended for using the company's Antigravity agent development app and Gemini services with third-party agent tools like OpenClaw and OpenCode.
Dissatisfied customers have expressed skepticism that using Antigravity and Gemini CLI with a third-party wrapper or harness, like OpenClaw, can be legitimately characterized as malicious.