With Manus, Meta transforms your PC into an autonomous assistant capable of acting on your behalf.

Meta is continuing its aggressive AI strategy, and after several targeted acquisitions, the company is accelerating its development of autonomous agents, AI capable of performing complex tasks without constant intervention.

The latest development concerns a major evolution of Manus, its recently acquired startup, which is changing scale with a more concrete and accessible approach…

Manus leaves the cloud to install itself on your PC

An overview From “My Computer” – Source: Manus

Until now, Manus operated exclusively in the cloud, via a web interface. Now, with the “My Computer” feature, announced on the Manus website, the AI agent can operate directly on a computer, via a dedicated application available on macOS and Windows.

This change profoundly transforms its use, as the agent can access local files, interact with installed applications, and execute commands in the terminal. In practical terms, Manus acts as a true digital assistant capable of manipulating your machine for you. The use cases are numerous, ranging from automatic file organization and local data analysis to software launches and even application development. The agent can also autonomously chain together complex tasks, while remaining remotely controllable from a smartphone.

To manage these capabilities, Meta has integrated validation mechanisms, where each sensitive action requires explicit authorization, with options such as "Authorize once" or "Always allow", in order to limit the risks associated with access to personal data.

Note that, still being in beta, this feature is currently reserved for subscribers of the paid plan, offered at around $20 per month.

Meta aligns with the OpenClaw trend

Manus intervenes directly on the user's computer – Source: Manus

With this development, Meta clearly follows in the footsteps of OpenClaw, formerly known as ClawdBot, the open-source AI agent that recently generated considerable excitement in the tech community.

With its unique ability to operate locally, directly on users' machines, and with extensive access to their environment, this positioning is appealing due to its promise of autonomy and productivity, to the point of attracting the attention of OpenAI. Meta no longer hides its ambition to offer a consumer alternative, more accessible than open-source solutions. At the same time, the competition is organizing itself, and Perplexity has already unveiled "Personal Computer," a similar agent designed to run continuously on a Mac. For its part, Manus is capitalizing on its existing integrations with services like Gmail and Google Calendar to enrich its ecosystem. Nevertheless, security remains a fundamental concern, as giving AI direct access to a personal computer raises issues of privacy and control. This is a point that Meta will need to monitor closely to convince users beyond its initial target audience. With Manus, the company is no longer content with simply developing AI models, but now seeks to establish itself as a central player in the human-computer interface, transforming the computer into an AI-driven environment…