MiniMax AI

MiniMax is a Chinese artificial intelligence company, based in Shanghai, that works on several fronts at once: language models for chatting, coding and working as an agent (the M series), a very well-known video generator called Hailuo, and voice, music and image models. So it's useful both for text tasks and for creating audiovisual content.

What's confusing is that many people know it only for the Hailuo videos and don't realise there are also text models behind it that compete with more famous ones. Some of those models are published with open weights but, as with those from other Chinese companies, they're big and not designed for a home computer. If you use them through its website or its API, the usual precaution applies: your data travels to its servers and is governed by its terms.

MiniMax is one of the AIs I use besides Claude. What it gives you for free and where the limit is I explain in "Can you work professionally with free AI tools?". What I use it for, how it compares with Claude and OpenAI on my tasks and what data I trust it with and what I don't, in "Kimi, GLM and MiniMax: the Chinese alternatives I use". If you just want to have a look around, start with something that doesn't involve sensitive data.