😵‍💫The Manus AI Frenzy

Today we will discuss:

• Sponsored: Innovating with AI—Helping AI enthusiasts become high-earning consultants with the tools, strategies, and clients to succeed 

• The Manus AI debate—China’s new AI platform is attracting attention, but some remain skeptical

• Foxconn’s FoxBrain—An AI model built to support AI-driven manufacturing

• In other AI news today— Apple delays Siri AI improvements to 2026, Microsoft explores 3D gaming for Copilot, and the DOJ’s latest proposal still calls for Google to divest Chrome but allows AI investments

• Don’t miss this week’s Workflow Wednesday—AI collaboration made easy with Reclaim.ai, Notion, and Anyword; now available at only $20/month! 

• Saved the best for last—10 must-try AI tools

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China’s Manus AI is making headlines, but questions remain about its capabilities

Key Points 

• Manus AI has gained over 138,000 Discord members, with invite codes reportedly selling for thousands on resale platforms.

• However, early users have reported errors, factual mistakes, and missing citations, raising concerns about whether Manus can live up to expectations.

♨️News – Manus, a new “agentic” AI platform that launched in preview last week, is already generating significant buzz. Chinese media quickly labeled it a breakthrough—QQ News called it “the pride of domestic products.”

Industry experts were equally impressed. Hugging Face’s head of product called Manus “the most impressive AI tool I’ve ever tried,” while AI policy researcher Dean Ball described it as the “most sophisticated computer using AI.”

The excitement has translated into rapid adoption. Manus’ official Discord server grew to over 138,000 members in just a few days, and invite codes are reportedly selling for thousands of dollars on Chinese resale app Xianyu.

🤔What’s the catch? Manus isn’t entirely built from scratch. Reports suggest it combines fine-tuned versions of existing AI models, including Anthropic’s Claude and Alibaba’s Qwen, to perform tasks like drafting research reports and analyzing financial filings.

Despite this, The Butterfly Effect—the company behind Manus—has made ambitious claims, suggesting it can do everything from buying real estate to developing video games. In a viral video on X, research lead Yichao “Peak” Ji implied that Manus outperforms OpenAI’s deep research. But some early users aren’t convinced. Alexander Doria, co-founder of AI startup Pleias, reported running into errors and infinite loops. Others have pointed out factual mistakes, missing citations, and inconsistent results.

🤹‍♂️In conclusion – Manus is still in its early stages, and its developers say they’re working to scale its capabilities and address reported issues. But for now, the excitement around the platform may be running ahead of what it can actually deliver.

Read the full story here.

Foxconn’s new AI model signals a push for smarter manufacturing

Key Points 

• Foxconn’s FoxBrain AI model is powered by 120 Nvidia H100 GPUs, it excels in math, logic, and traditional Chinese language understanding.

• Originally for internal use, Foxconn plans to open-source FoxBrain to expand AI adoption in manufacturing.

☕News - Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer and a key Apple supplier, has introduced its first large language model (LLM) trained on traditional Chinese characters. The move marks a major step in the company’s efforts to integrate AI into manufacturing.  

👨‍💻Here's the lowdown - Called FoxBrain, the model was developed in just four weeks using a “more efficient and lower-cost” training method, according to Foxconn. The company says this is a milestone for Taiwan’s AI industry.  

FoxBrain was trained using 120 Nvidia H100 GPUs and is designed to excel in math and logical reasoning. Initially built for internal use, Foxconn plans to open-source it in the future to encourage collaboration and expand AI applications in manufacturing.  

The model is based on Meta’s Llama 3.1 architecture and has 70 billion parameters. Foxconn claims it outperforms Llama-3-Taiwan-70B—another open-source model trained on traditional Chinese and English—on most categories of TMMLU+, a key benchmark for traditional Chinese language understanding.

Read the full story here. 

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