Manus, the new artificial intelligence tool from China, is disrupting the global tech race with a new AI agent that some analysts believe is far more powerful than the competition.

Manus AI cofounder Yichao “Peak” Ji said in a video preview of his team’s new tool that it is the “first general AI agent.”

He said Manus gives a window into artificial general intelligence, AGI, the term tech researchers use to describe a theoretical artificially intelligent system that can outperform human capabilities...

One recent evening in Shenzhen, a group of software engineers gathered in a dimly lit co-working space, furiously typing as they monitored the performance of a new AI system. The air was electric, thick with the hum of servers and the glow of high-resolution monitors. They were testing Manus, a revolutionary AI agent capable of independent thought and action. Within hours, its March 6 launch would send shockwaves through the global AI community, reigniting a debate that had simmered for decades: What happens when artificial intelligence stops asking for permission and starts...

Chinese AI researchers say they've created the world's first fully autonomous AI agent — but others aren't convinced that its capabilities make it another "DeepSeek moment."

The agent, called Manus, launched last week and quickly became a hot topic in AI circles.

Its viral launch demo sparked a wave of online discussion, with some praising its capabilities and others pointing out its flaws, along with raising concerns about privacy...

Apple has promised to fix a bug in its iPhone automatic dictation tool after some users reported it had suggested to them “Trump” when they said the word “racist”.

The glitch was first highlighted in a viral post on TikTok, when the speech-to-text tool sometimes briefly flashed up the word “Trump” when they said “racist”, and was later repeated by others on social media.

“We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers dictation and we are rolling out a fix,” an Apple spokesperson said.

Apple has promised to fix quickly a bug in its voice-to-text function that briefly swapped words with an “r” consonant — including “racist” — for “Trump”.

The phenomenon, which went viral in a video on TikTok and was quickly seized upon by rightwing commentators, comes as the $3.7tn company seeks to shore up its relationship with Donald Trump’s administration.

“We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers dictation and we are rolling out a fix today,” Apple said on Tuesday.

Apple’s iPhone voice-to-text feature is sparking controversy after a viral TikTok video showed a user speaking the word "racist," which at first showed up as "Trump" before switching back to "racist."

Fox News Digital was able to replicate the issue multiple times. The voice-to-text dictation feature was observed briefly flashing "Trump" when a user said "racist" before it quickly changed back to "racist" – just like in the viral TikTok video.

While using Apple’s automatic dictation feature to send messages on Tuesday, some iPhone users reported seeing a peculiar bug: the word “racist” temporarily appearing as “Trump,” before quickly correcting itself.

The message blip, which was replicated several times by The New York Times, provoked controversy after appearing in a viral TikTok post, raising questions about Apple’s artificial intelligence capabilities.

An Apple spokeswoman blamed the issue on phonetic overlap between the two words, and said the company was working on a fix.

Google on Tuesday updated its ethical guidelines around artificial intelligence, removing commitments not to apply the technology to weapons or surveillance.

The company’s AI principles previously included a section listing four “Applications we will not pursue.” As recently as Thursday, that included weapons, surveillance, technologies that “cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” and use cases contravening principles of international law and human rights, according to a copy hosted by the Internet Archive.