Latest news with #JiYichao
South China Morning Post
07-03-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Was Manus another DeepSeek moment? Chinese AI agent faces doubts after rapid rise to fame
General-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) agent Manus, which was developed by a Chinese team, faces doubts about its technological capabilities, as very few people were able to test the product owing to an apparent shortage of server capacity after a surge in popularity. Advertisement While Manus has gained attention for its claimed ability to handle complex tasks, and is being hailed by investors as another breakthrough following the low-cost AI models from DeepSeek, its availability remains limited a day after launch. The firm's account on social media X was also suspended on Friday. The invitation-only arrangement spurred a scramble among users seeking to access Manus. On China's second-hand online marketplace Xianyu, some vendors were even selling Manus invitation codes or renting out accounts, with some critics accusing the team behind Manus of intentionally deploying scarcity marketing tactics. Ji Yichao, chief scientist of Manus AI, introduces the AI agent in a demonstration video. Photo: Handout 'The current invite-only mechanism is due to genuinely limited server capacity at this stage,' Manus AI's product partner Zhang Tao said in a social media post on Thursday afternoon. Zhang apologised, admitting the team underestimated the enthusiasm of the public response, and initially intended only to share some achievements from the AI agent. Consequently, their server resources were planned to only meet a demonstration level. 'The current version of Manus is still in its infancy, far from what we aim to deliver in our final product,' Zhang added. Meanwhile, the Manus team's official account on X was suspended for violating the platform's rules. 'Peak' Yichao Ji, co-founder and chief scientist of Manus, said the team was 'actively working with X's support team to resolve this matter'. Advertisement The suspension was potentially linked to cryptocurrency scams by unrelated third-party accounts attempting to capitalise on its traffic.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The next DeepSeek moment? Chinese start-up Monica unveils ‘Manus', claiming world's first AI that can think like humans (VIDEO)
BEIJING, March 7 – Chinese start-up Monica has unveiled an artificial intelligence (AI) agent called Manus, sparking widespread attention and discussions online, with some media comparing its launch to the rise of DeepSeek. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV has boldly described it as the world's first general AI agent, capable of autonomously and independently thinking, planning, and executing complex tasks. 'Manus is a general AI agent that bridges minds and actions: it doesn't just think, it delivers results. Manus excels at various tasks in work and life, getting everything done while you rest,' it said on its website. Monica claimed the AI agent can be applied to diverse tasks, including trip planning and stock analysis. It also asserted that in GAIA, a benchmark for evaluating general AI assistants, Manus achieved state-of-the-art results across all difficulty levels, surpassing OpenAI's models of the same level. General AI refers to a type of AI that can perform any task a human can, whereas generative AI like ChatGPT is a specific tool designed mainly to generate text and answer questions within its trained knowledge. A video introducing Manus by Ji Yichao, its co-founder and chief scientist, was viewed over hundreds of thousands times on X, formerly Twitter, within 20 hours of being posted. 'For the past year, we've been quietly building what we believe is the next evolution in AI, and today we're launching an early preview of Manus, the first general AI agent,' Ji reportedly said, as quoted by Beijing-based The Global Times. The name 'Manus' is derived from the Latin phrase 'Mens et Manus,' meaning 'Mind and Hand,' reflecting the company's vision of applying knowledge to practical tasks. Currently, access to Manus is restricted, requiring an invitation code. CCTV reported that the scarcity of these codes has driven users to seek them on a domestic secondhand marketplace, where prices range from 999 yuan (RM606) to 50,000 yuan (RM30,500). The founding team of Monica includes Xiao Hong, a serial entrepreneur and a 2015 graduate of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, according to the South China Morning Post. In January, Chinese firm DeepSeek's AI chatbot surged to the top of the Apple Store charts, surprising industry experts and challenging US tech giants like Nvidia and Meta in the competitive AI race.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Another DeepSeek moment? General AI agent Manus shows ability to handle complex tasks
A general artificial intelligence (AI) agent developed by a low-profile team backed by Chinese investors and developers has quickly gained attention in the AI community for its ability to handle complex, real-world tasks. Manus, currently available as an invitation-only web preview, can execute practical tasks such as creating a custom website through a step-by-step process, according to a demonstration video on its website The website also listed tasks that can be done by the Manus AI agent, which include devising an itinerary for a trip to Japan, providing an in-depth analysis of Tesla's stock, creating an interactive course for middle-school teachers, comparing different insurance policies, and assisting in business-to-business supplier sourcing, among others. Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team. It also claims that Manus can outperform OpenAI's Deep Research based on the GAIA benchmark, a third-party measure of general AI assistants. The DeepSeek logo is seen in this illustration taken January 27, 2025. Photo: Reuters alt=The DeepSeek logo is seen in this illustration taken January 27, 2025. Photo: Reuters> While Manus has provided little information about its corporate structure, its team and underlying models for the agent, the demo video has triggered massive interest. The video, published on X on Wednesday night, had received over 200,000 views by noon Thursday, with many comments asking for an invitation code to try the agent. The sudden popularity of Manus among the AI community is similar to the buzz that followed the launch of DeepSeek's R1 reasoning model in January. A general-purpose AI agent, which can interact with its environment, collect data and use the data to handle tasks to meet predetermined goals, is widely seen as the future of AI applications. Based on its demo, Manus is able to autonomously browse websites, leverage various capabilities and display its workflow in real-time. The product is being described by its developer as "a general AI agent that bridges minds and actions: it doesn't just think, it delivers results". The demo video is hosted by "Peak" Ji Yichao, a 33-year-old Chinese entrepreneur and tech enthusiast who created the mobile browser Mammoth and founded Peak Labs in the US. According to sources in China's venture capital industry, the team behind Manus previously developed Monica AI, a popular AI assistant with millions of users that was capable of integrating various large AI models. Monica is available as a browser extension and as an app across mobile and desktop platforms. The founding team of Monica includes Xiao Hong, a serial entrepreneur and 2015 graduate from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
