Manus, an “agentic” 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 “the most impressive AI tool I’ve ever tried.” AI policy researcher Dean Ball described Manus as the “most sophisticated computer using AI.” 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 it’s not clear the hype is justified.
excellent https://t.co/TfeV9QZ1d0
— jack (@jack) March 9, 2025
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.
Yet on its website, The Butterfly Effect — the Chinese company behind Manus — 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 “Peak” Ji, a research lead for Manus, implied that the platform was superior to agentic tools such as OpenAI’s deep research and Operator. Manus outperforms deep research on a popular benchmark for general AI assistants called GAIA, Ji claimed, which probes an AI’s ability to carry out work by browsing the web, using software, and more.
“[Manus] isn’t just another chatbot or workflow,” Ji said in the video. “It’s a completely autonomous agent that bridges the gap between conception and execution […] We see it as the next paradigm of human-machine collaboration.”
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 doesn’t consistently cite its work — and often misses information that’s easily found online.
Deep Research finished in under 15 minutes. Unfortunately, Manus AI failed after 50 minutes at step 18/20! 😑 It was performing quite well-I was watching Manus’ 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
— Derya Unutmaz, MD (@DeryaTR_) March 8, 2025
My own experience with Manus hasn’t 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 couldn’t complete the ordering process — 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 didn’t leave much room for ambiguity (e.g. “look for a business-class flight, prioritizing price and flexible dates”), 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, here’s the good and the bad.
Good:
– The research it does on the internet and the reports it generates are incredible.
– Its ability to run scripts behind the scenes to execute tasks is impressive.
– The plans it…— AshutoshShrivastava (@ai_for_success) March 9, 2025
A spokesperson for Manus sent TechCrunch the following statement via DM:
“As a small team, our focus is to keep improving Manus and make AI agents that actually help users solve problems […] The primary goal of the current closed beta is to stress-test various parts of the system and identify issues. We deeply appreciate the valuable insights shared by everyone.”
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 “the pride of domestic products.” Meanwhile, AI influencers on social media spread misinformation about Manus’ capabilities. A widely-shared video showed a desktop program, ostensibly Manus, taking action across multiple smartphone apps. Ji confirmed that the video wasn’t, in fact, a demo of Manus.
Other influential AI accounts on X sought to draw comparisons between Manus and Chinese AI company DeepSeek — comparisons not necessarily rooted in fact. The Butterfly Effect didn’t develop any in-house models, unlike DeepSeek. And while DeepSeek made many of its technologies openly available, Monica hasn’t — at least not quite yet.
To be fair to The Butterfly Effect, Manus is in very early access. The company claims it’s working to scale computing capacity and fix issues as they’re reported. But as the platform currently exists, Manus appears to be a case of hype running ahead of technological innovation.
Updated 6:02 p.m. Pacific: Added a statement from a Manus spokesperson and corrected a misidentification of the company behind Manus.
