Manus, an โagenticโ AI platform that launched in preview last week, is generating more hype than a Taylor Swift concert.
The head of product at Hugging Face called Manus โthe most impressive AI tool Iโve ever tried.โ AI policy researcher Dean Ball described Manus as the โmost sophisticated computer using AI.โ 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 itโs not clear the hype is justified.
excellent https://t.co/TfeV9QZ1d0
โ jack (@jack) March 9, 2025
Manus wasnโt developed entirely from scratch. According to reports on social media, the platform uses a combination of existing and fine-tuned AI models, including Anthropicโs Claude and Alibabaโs Qwen, to perform tasks such as drafting research reports and analyzing financial filings.
Yet on its website, Monica โ the Chinese startup behind Manus โ gives a few wild examples of what the platform supposedly can accomplish, from buying real estate to programming video games.
In a viral video on X, Yichao โPeakโ Ji, a research lead for Manus, implied that the platform was superior to agentic tools such as OpenAIโs deep research and Operator. Manus outperforms deep research on a popular benchmark for general AI assistants called GAIA, Ji claimed, which probes an AIโs ability to carry out work by browsing the web, using software, and more.
โ[Manus] isnโt just another chatbot or workflow,โ Ji said in the video. โItโs a completely autonomous agent that bridges the gap between conception and execution [โฆ] We see it as the next paradigm of human-machine collaboration.โ
But some early users say that Manus is no panacea.
Alexander Doria, the co-founder of AI startup Pleias, said in a post on X that he encountered error messages and endless loops while testing Manus. Other X users pointed out that Manus makes mistakes on factual questions and doesnโt consistently cite its work โ and often misses information thatโs easily found online.
Deep Research finished in under 15 minutes. Unfortunately, Manus AI failed after 50 minutes at step 18/20! ๐ It was performing quite well-I was watching Manusโ output & it seemed excellent. However, running the same prompt a second time is a bit frustrating as it takes too long! https://t.co/bGtmOI65CP
โ Derya Unutmaz, MD (@DeryaTR_) March 8, 2025
My own experience with Manus hasnโt been incredibly positive.
I asked the platform to handle what seemed to me like a pretty straightforward request: order a fried chicken sandwich from a top-rated fast food joint in my delivery range. After about ten minutes, Manus crashed. On the second attempt, it found a menu item that met my criteria, but Manus couldnโt complete the ordering process โ or provide a checkout link, even.
Manus similarly whiffed when I asked it to book a flight from NYC to Japan. Given instructions that I thought didnโt leave much room for ambiguity (e.g. โlook for a business-class flight, prioritizing price and flexible datesโ), the best Manus could do was serve up links to fares across several airline websites and airfare search engines like Kayak, some of which were broken.
Hoping the next few tasks might be the charm, I told Manus to reserve a table for one at a restaurant within walking distance. It failed after a few minutes. Then I asked the platform to build a Naruto-inspired fighting game. It errored out half an hour in, which is when I decided to throw in the towel.
Honest opinion after trying Manus AI for the last 3 days, hereโs the good and the bad.
Good:
โ The research it does on the internet and the reports it generates are incredible.
โ Its ability to run scripts behind the scenes to execute tasks is impressive.
โ The plans itโฆโ AshutoshShrivastava (@ai_for_success) March 9, 2025
Weโve reached out to Monica for comment and will update this post if we hear back.
So if Manusis is falling short of its technical promises, why did it blow up? A few factors contributed, such as the exclusivity created by a scarcity of invites.
Chinese media was quick to tout Manus as an AI breakthrough; publication QQ News called it โthe pride of domestic products.โ Meanwhile, AI influencers on social media spread misinformation about Manusโ capabilities. A widely-shared video showed a desktop program, ostensibly Manus, taking action across multiple smartphone apps. Ji confirmed that the video wasnโt, in fact, a demo of Manus.
Other influential AI accounts on X sought to draw comparisons between Manus and Chinese AI company DeepSeek โ comparisons not necessarily rooted in fact. Monica didnโt develop in-house models, unlike DeepSeek. And while DeepSeek made many of its technologies openly available, Monica hasnโt โ at least not quite yet.
To be fair to Monica, Manus is in early access. The company claims itโs working to scale computing capacity and fix issues as theyโre reported. But as the platform currently exists, Manus appears to be a case of hype running ahead of technological innovation.
