Manus, an “agent” KI platform that started in Preview last week, creates more hype than a Taylor Swift concert.
The product head on the hugging face Manus called “The most impressive AI tool I’ve ever tried.” AI policy researcher Dean Ball described Manus as the “most demanding computer with AI”. The Official Discord server For Manus, grew to over 138,000 members in just a few days and invite codes for Manus Reports Sale for thousands of dollars in the Chinese reseller -app Xianyu.
But it is not clear that the hype is justified.
excellent https://t.co/tfev9qz1d0
– Jack (@Jack) March 9, 2025
Manus was not completely developed from scratch. Report On social media, the platform uses a combination of existing and finely coordinated AI models, including the Qwen of Anthropic and Alibaba, to carry out tasks such as the development of research reports and the analysis of financial applications.
But on his website Monica – the Chinese startup behind Manus – gives a few wild examples of what the platform can supposedly achieve, From buying real estate to programming video games.
In A Viral video On X, Yichao “Peak” Ji, a research manager for Manus, implied that the platform was superior to agent tools such as Openais deep research And operator. Manus surpasses the deep research of a popular benchmark for general AI assistants named Gaia, Ji claimed, who examines the ability of a AI to do the work by searching the website, the use of software and much more.
“(Manus) is not just another chatbot or workflow,” said Ji in the video. “It is a completely autonomous agent that bridges the gap between conception and execution (…). We see it as the next paradigm of working between people and the machine.”
However, some early users say that Manus is not a panacea.
Alexander Doria, co -founder of Ai Startup Pleias, said in a post on x that he encounters error messages and endless loops when testing manus. Other X users pointed out that Manus makes mistakes on factual questions And does not quote his work consistently – And Missing information often that can be found easily online.
The deep research ended in less than 15 minutes. Unfortunately, Manus Ai failed after 50 minutes in step 18/20! 😑 It was pretty good that I watched manus’ output and seemed excellent. A second time the same command prompt is a bit frustrating because it takes too long! https://t.co/bgtmoi65cp
– Derya does not forget, md (@deryatr_) March 8, 2025
My own experience with Manus was not incredibly positive.
I asked the platform to cope with a fairly uncomplicated request: Order a fried chicken sandwich from a top fast food joint in my delivery area. Manus crashed after about ten minutes. The second attempt found a menu element that met my criteria, but Manus could not complete the ordering process – or even provide a checkout link.
Manus was similar when I asked him to book a flight from NYC to Japan. In view of the instructions that I thought, they did not leave much space for ambiguities (e.g. looking for a business class flight, prioritization of price and flexible data “), the best manus left to tariffs on several airlines and flight price search engines such as Kayak, some of which were broken.
In the hope that the next tasks of the charm could be, I said Manus that he should reserve a table for one in a restaurant. It failed after a few minutes. Then I asked the platform to build a fighting game inspired in Naruto. It was half an hour in the time when I decided to throw the towel.
In the attempt by Manus Ai in the last 3 days, the good opinion is the good and the bad.
Good:
– Research on the Internet and the reports it generates are incredible.
– His ability to carry out scripts behind the scenes to carry out tasks is impressive.
– the plans …– Ashutoshshrivastava (@ai_for_Success) March 9, 2025
We contacted Monica to get a comment and will update this post when we hear.
So if Manusis has no longer blown up his technical promises? Some factors contributed, for example the exclusivity created by A Lack of invitations.
The Chinese media quickly advertised manus as a AI breakthrough. Publication QQ News called it “The pride of domestic products.” In the meantime, AI influencers are spreading misinformation about Manus’ skills on social media. A widespread video Showed a desktop program, supposedly manus that took action in several smartphone apps. Ji confirmed That the video was indeed not a demo by manus.
Other influential AI Accounts On X tried to draw comparisons between Manus and Chinese KI company Deepseek – Compare that are not necessarily rooted in fact. In contrast to Deepseek, Monica did not develop any internal models. And while Deepseek openly made many of his technologies available, Monica does not have – At least not quite yet.
To be fair for Monica, manus is in early access. The company claims that it is working on scaling the computer capacity and solving problems as they are reported. But if the platform currently exists, Manus seems to be a case of a hype that is ahead of technological innovation.
