Manus AI: Hype vs. Reality – What to Know About China’s Latest AI Sensation

Manus AI is making waves as an advanced agentic platform, but early users report performance issues.
Matilda
Manus AI: Hype vs. Reality – What to Know About China’s Latest AI Sensation
Manus, an “agentic” AI platform that launched in preview last week, is generating more hype than a Taylor Swift concert. Image:OpenAI  The head of product at Hugging Face called Manus “the most impressive AI tool I’ve ever tried.” AI policy researcher Dean Ball described Manus as the “most sophisticated computer using AI.” The official Discord server for Manus grew to over 138,000 members in just a few days, and invite codes for Manus are reportedly selling for thousands of dollars on Chinese reseller app Xianyu. But it’s not clear the hype is justified. Manus wasn’t developed entirely from scratch. According to reports on social media, the platform uses a combination of existing and fine-tuned AI models, including Anthropic’s Claude and Alibaba’s Qwen, to perform tasks such as drafting research reports and analyzing financial filings. Yet on its website, The Butterfly Effect — the Chinese company behind Manus — gives a few wild examples of what the platform supposedly can accomplish, from…