A new artificial intelligence (AI) agent from China that claims to be able to work autonomously without human intervention has sparked a debate in industry circles, with some responding to the emergence of the AI with concern, while others are disappointed.
Startup Butterfly Effect has been quietly developing an AI-powered digital assistant called Manus for the past year, co-founder Yichao “Peak” Ji said in a launch video posted on YouTube.
"We see it as a new paradigm in human-machine collaboration, and possibly the beginning of AGI," he said, referring to artificial general intelligence (AGI) that aims to think like humans.
Manus kicked off the launch phase with a limited invitation last week, with very limited access to the event.
Reviews of Manus that emerged on social media varied, from enthusiastic to disappointed.
"Tried it, and it's true... Manus is the most impressive AI tool I've ever tried," Hugging Face's Head of Product Design Victor Mustar said in a post on X.
"The agency's capabilities are extraordinary, redefining what is possible."
However, criticism has also emerged, including complaints that Manus has difficulty with simple tasks such as booking plane tickets, and often experiences errors or gets stuck in endless loops .
Since this AI processing is cloud- based , some users are concerned about the security of their data.
The possibility of Chinese companies taking the lead in AI has been a hot topic since China-based company DeepSeek emerged last January.
DeepSeek's AI model challenges models developed by OpenAI, Google and other US competitors, but operates at a much lower cost.
The latest trend in AI is digital agents specialized to perform specific tasks or areas.
Anthropic and OpenAI have been adding these capabilities to their AI platforms since late last year.
Butterfly Effect claims that Manus is capable of performing tasks such as buying property in New York or editing podcasts.
However, TechCrunch journalist Kyle Wiggers reported that Manus failed when asked to order a sandwich or find a plane ticket to Japan during a test run.
China's rapid progress in AI, despite US restrictions on exports of advanced computer chips, has caught the attention of Silicon Valley.
Additionally, releasing AI agents onto the internet without strict regulation raises concerns about potential errors or misuse, such as stock market turmoil caused by digital agents making factual errors.
Corpora.ai CEO Mel Morris doesn’t consider Manus a “revolutionary leap” over existing AI models, but he sees its ability to access remote computer servers as a potential risk to data privacy.
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