Now, Malaysia is building on that ecosystem with the recently launched ILMU Claw. Foong Chee Mun, CEO of YTL AI Labs, describes what sets ILMU Claw apart from the chatbots most of us use.
“When we look at ChatGPT and Claude, it is still a very passive technology in the sense that it is usually informational. You can ask it for advice or research, and it will tell you that,” he explained.
“OpenClaw and ILMU Claw, however, are a different type of technology – they are fully active AI agents.”
In simple terms, a chatbot answers questions while an AI agent gets things done, acting as your personal digital concierge. ILMU Claw, which stands on par with world-class AI platforms, is the brain behind the software layer provided by OpenClaw.
So, for example, while a standard AI can offer you a recipe, an ILMU Claw agent can log into your grocery app, add the ingredients to your cart, and schedule the delivery.
By acting as a “brain and body”, these agents save you hours of manual work.
Foong, who has nearly 30 years of experience in artificial intelligence, shared some of his favourite ways to use AI agents built with ILMU Claw.
“I can tell it to read through all of my emails and summarise the top five points I need to know before my next meeting. It will be able to go into Gmail and Google Calendar to do just that,” he shared.
“You can also ask it to acquire skills. I can ask the AI agent to control my home sound system – for example, to play loud rock music every day at 7am to wake me up.”
Elaborating, he said ILMU Claw enables users to create multiple AI agents to cater to their daily tasks, and even develop digital systems like mobile applications.
ILMU, which stands for Intelek Luhur Malaysia Untukmu, was trained on local data and understands nuances that global AI models often miss. It is optimised for Bahasa Melayu, “Malaysian English” or Manglish, and even regional dialects such as Kelantanese, along with local cultural knowledge.
As part of the launch, YTL AI Labs sponsored the OpenClaw KL event on April 24, where developers and AI builders got hands-on access to ILMU Claw.
Powered by ILMU-Nemo-Nano and developed in collaboration with Nvidia, ILMU Claw is hosted entirely on Malaysian infrastructure via the secure YTL AI Cloud. Everything runs on the YTL Green Data Centre Park in Kulai, Johor, which ensures data remains within the country.
Foong stressed this as a milestone in Malaysia’s push for sovereign AI. “AI is the most profound technology of our lifetime. One or two years from now, there will be more AI-generated work versus human-generated work,” he said.
He noted that critical government functions, including defence, healthcare and the judiciary, should adopt AI governed by Malaysian law.
“If we depend on OpenAI for AI-generated work entirely, someday, if the US were to withdraw the OpenAI service, 50% of our government work would be stranded. This is why having sovereign AI is a matter of resiliency.”
Foong concluded that YTL AI Labs aspires to build every layer of the artificial intelligence ecosystem. “We hope to drive Malaysia towards a highly AI-driven country, making it more competitive.”
With 800 seats for ILMU Claw available, spots are limited, so sign up now by clicking here. Find out more at ytlailabs.com.