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.

Manus AI isn’t a breakthrough—it’s just another LLM executing scripted workflows. True AI success lies in integration, specialization and human oversight.

Some early users were enthusiastic about the product’s capabilities; others complained it took too long and crashed.

In the past year, artificial intelligence leaders have talked about the advent of agents that can do work autonomously. Now, China says it has developed the world’s first.