A powerful new AI tool Manus is making waves in China, fuelling hopes that it could replicate the success of DeepSeek, which earlier this year rattled the global tech industry with its state-of-the-art chatbot.

Some early users were enthusiastic about the product’s capabilities; others complained it took too long and crashed.

Manus, a cutting-edge AI agent from China, surpasses chatbots by executing tasks autonomously. Learn about its capabilities, limitations, and potential.

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.

Manus AI isn’t a breakthrough—it’s just another LLM executing scripted workflows. True AI success lies in integration, specialization and human oversight.

China's Manus claims to be the first fully autonomous AI agent. Some researchers are calling it a leap in AI capabilities — others aren't convinced.

In the past year, artificial intelligence leaders have talked about the advent of agents that can do work autonomously. Now, China says it has developed the world’s first.