China’s New AI Contender: Is Manus the Next Big Thing?
China might be experiencing another moment in the AI spotlight. Following the recent attention garnered by DeepSeek AI’s DeepSeek-R1 model, another Chinese startup, Monica, has unveiled its artificial intelligence agent, Manus. The launch of Manus has quickly captured global attention, with some already labeling it a “DeepSeek moment” for China, reflecting the excitement and potential impact of this new technology.
Manus, currently accessible through an invitation-only web preview, is attracting attention due to its capacity to handle complex real-world tasks. The AI agent can autonomously perform practical actions like creating websites through a step-by-step process. Monica shared a demo video on the official website, manus.im, showcasing the agent’s capabilities. The AI agent reportedly went viral within 20 hours of its preview launch, demonstrating significant interest from the tech community.
What is Manus AI?
Manus is being hailed as the world’s first truly general AI agent, capable of independent thinking, planning, and task execution to deliver comprehensive results. According to the company’s website, Manus can create detailed travel itineraries for trips to Japan, analyze stocks, develop interactive coursework for teachers, and compare insurance policies. Monica claims that Manus outperforms OpenAI’s DeepResearch on the GAIA benchmark, a third-party method for assessing general AI assistants.
According to the makers, Manus AI has been designed to autonomously perform complex tasks across various industries. Its distinct features are autonomous operations and asynchronous cloud-based functionality, which allow users to assign it tasks and disconnect their devices. The makers claim that Manus, even after being disconnected, continues working in the cloud and provides results upon completion.
Chinese startup Monica just launched Manus, the world’s first general AI agent. #Manus has set new state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance across all three difficulty levels, surpassing #OpenAI’s Deep Research in the GAIA benchmark for real-world problem-solving capabilities. — Chengdu Hi-tech Zone (@ChengduHitech) March 7, 2025
The AI agent adapts to user preferences over time, thereby enhancing its performance and personalization with continued use.
The demo video, shared on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday night, quickly gained over 200,000 views by Thursday noon. Many users have requested invitation codes to try out this new AI agent. Weeks prior, DeepSeek AI’s DeepSeek R1 model also generated significant excitement, with reports that its development cost was a fraction of those of frontier models from OpenAI, Meta, and Google.
Based on demonstrations, Manus interacts with its environment by gathering data, executing tasks, browsing websites, and using various tools, providing a real-time display of its workflow. Users have shared impressive clips of the agent’s capabilities. One demo showed the AI controlling up to 50 screens simultaneously, using X (formerly Twitter), Telegram, and other online platforms concurrently, demonstrating a high level of automation.
There are not many details about the company. However, the demo video was presented by Peak Ji Yichao, a 33-year-old Chinese entrepreneur and tech enthusiast who also created the mobile browser Mammoth.
How to Use Manus AI
Getting started with Manus is straightforward; users can begin by using a prompt. For example, a user could type, “Give a 7-day travel itinerary with a specific budget to Bali.” Manus then researches, compiles data, and generates a structured output in real-time. It can generate files, browse the web for information, interact with web pages, take screenshots and even record browsing activity.
A New Era for AI-Powered Browsing?
With tech companies racing to launch AI-powered browsers, the industry is shifting towards intelligent web navigation. Manus seems to represent a new dimension in this evolution, providing a more intuitive, effective, and potentially more affordable option to existing tools. Its ability to conduct extensive web research, create files, and automate online tasks suggests that Manus could redefine how we interact with the internet. The rapid development of AI in China suggests that Manus might become the next significant advancement in AI-driven automation.
