Hey friend,

This week, we’ll explore:

• An AI agent from China that’s going viral

• Google’s new ‘AI mode’

• Alibaba's new QwQ-32B Model (I love this one)

• How to write code inside N8N automations

Let's dive in.

AI Highlights

Here’s my pick of AI news this week:

1. Manus: China's New AI Agent Goes Viral with Autonomous Task Capabilities

Chinese startup Monica has unveiled Manus, a sophisticated "general agent" AI system designed to autonomously handle complex real-world tasks across multiple domains. This highlights China's growing AI capabilities.

• Advanced functionality: Manus independently completes complex tasks spanning data analysis, coding, stock market analysis, and task automation, representing a shift from information-processing AI to action-taking AI.

• Limited availability: Currently offered as an invitation-only web preview, suggesting a controlled rollout strategy.

• Geopolitical significance: Manus underscores the ongoing competition for AI development between China and Western countries, particularly the United States.

2. Alibaba's QwQ-32B Model Achieves Breakthrough Performance with Fewer Parameters

Alibaba's Qwen team has introduced QwQ-32B, a 32-billion-parameter AI model that demonstrates the potential of scaled reinforcement learning in creating more efficient yet powerful AI systems.

• Impressive efficiency: QwQ-32B matches or outperforms models with 20 times more parameters, including the 671-billion-parameter DeepSeek-R1.

• Open-source: Released under the Apache 2.0 license on Hugging Face and ModelScope, enabling free downloads and commercial use.

• Advanced capabilities: Excels in complex tasks including mathematical reasoning, coding, and instruction following thanks to its innovative two-stage reinforcement learning process.

This model is available on OpenRouter.

3. Google Unveils AI Mode: A New Era for Search Interaction

Google has introduced "AI Mode," an experimental search feature that leverages advanced AI to transform how users interact with and retrieve information online. This is probably the biggest update Google Search has ever seen.

• Technical foundation: Powered by a custom version of Google's Gemini 2.0 model with advanced reasoning capabilities integrated with Knowledge Graph and real-time web data.

• Enhanced user experience: Supports complex multi-part queries, multimodal inputs (text, voice, image), and employs "query fan-out" for concurrent searches across multiple topics.

• Usage patterns: Early testing shows queries about twice as long as traditional searches and a 25% increase in follow-up questions, while maintaining source attribution to protect content creators.

4. OpenAI Developing Premium AI Agents with Enterprise-Level Pricing

OpenAI is reportedly preparing to launch specialised AI "agents" designed for advanced domain-specific tasks, with premium pricing that signals a significant shift in AI capabilities and market positioning.

• Tiered pricing structure: The planned suite includes a "high-income knowledge worker" agent ($2,000/month), software developer agent ($10,000/month), and PhD-level research agent ($20,000/month).

• Major investment backing: SoftBank, an OpenAI investor, has reportedly committed $3 billion to these agent products for 2025 alone.

• Strategic context: The development aligns with CEO Sam Altman's prediction of AI agents transforming company outputs by 2025, while occurring amid reports of OpenAI facing $5 billion in losses last year.

How To Use Code Inside N8N (YouTube Title Generator)

This week I published a tutorial on using code within N8N. There are many situations when building AI automations where you’ll hit problems with no obvious “build-in” solution.

In these situations, code can often act as a “get out of jail free” card. I also breakdown how to build a YouTube title generator prompt that produces surprisingly great results.

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Owain