Manus AI is Here. But What's Behind the Hype?

A little over a month after its disruptive entry into the market, the hype and fallout over DeepSeek has yet to settle. 

And while we pick our way through ongoing discussions about its implications for the industry, another Chinese company is having its own ‘DeepSeek moment’ by provoking speculation that it may have made the ultimate breakthrough.

The developers behind Manus, which launched on 6 March, claim it is the world’s first fully autonomous AI agent that doesn’t just assist humans, but replaces them for some tasks. 

In a demonstration video, Manus is shown analysing financial transactions, screening resumes to speed up the hiring process and conducting property research without oversight or interaction. 

Its creators say it can complete other tasks including building websites from scratch with minimal oversight, and is capable of working asynchronously in the cloud and notifying users when finished. 

A completely autonomous agent

Manus was built by Chinese startup Monica and is designed to think, plan and execute real-world tasks on its own. 

Unlike traditional AI chatbots that primarily focus on conversational tasks, Manus is built to execute a multitude of tasks – from booking holidays, creating podcasts and developing screenplays through to analysing stocks, report writing and developing education programmes – with step-by-step guidance, enabling it to do so more efficiently and accurately. 

“This isn’t just another chatbot or workflow tool,” says Yichao ‘Peak’ Ji, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Manus AI. “It’s a completely autonomous agent that bridges the gap between conception and execution.

“While other AI stops at generating ideas, Manus delivers results,” says Peak. “We see it as the next paradigm of human machine collaboration and potentially a glimpse into AGI (artificial general intelligence).”

Artificial general intelligence

The company’s claim to be nearing AGI is the cause of much of the hype surrounding Manus’ launch. 

AGI is a type of AI that matches or surpasses human cognitive capabilities. While AI has made significant progress in specific areas like language processing and image recognition, current AI systems are still considered ‘narrow AI’ as they lack the general intelligence to perform diverse tasks like humans. 

Currently, true AGI does not exist although research and development efforts are ongoing. Hypothetically, AGI refers to machine intelligence that possesses the ability to understand or learn any intellectual task a human being can. 

It will replicate human-like cognitive abilities including reasoning, problem solving, perception, learning and language comprehension. 

While some autonomous agents already exist, Manus’ multi-agent architecture enhances its ability to manage complex workflows through the use of specific sub-agents for various tasks – a feature that is yet to be standardised in many autonomous AI tools. 

Performance and capabilities

Manus’ creators state that on common benchmarks for evaluating general AI assistants on real-world problems, it has achieved state-of-the-art performance. 

On the GAIA benchmark, a measure of AI performance focused on the ability to handle complex, multi-layered queries, it outperforms OpenAI’s DeepResearch.

“Beyond benchmarks, Manus has been solving real-world problems on platforms like Upwork and Fiverr,” adds Peak. “It has proven its capabilities on Kaggle competitions.

Because manus operates independently in the cloud it continues to work on assigned tasks even if a user disconnects their device, allowing for uninterrupted workflow progress. 

It actively browses the internet, interacting with websites and displaying live workflows to demonstrate how it gathers and analyses information, and can learn from user interactions to provide tailored results. 

Currently Manus is available through an invitation-only web preview. While no official release date has been announced, Peak says the company intends to open-source some of its models later in the year “inviting everyone to explore this agentic future together”.

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