The company believes that by learning how to use applications on your behalf, the Rabbit R1 will surpass your smartphone as a personal assistant.
With the press of a button, the Rabbit R1, which will nestle in the palm of your hand, will have the capability to respond to inquiries, initiate a Spotify playlist, or hail a taxi. Doesn’t this familiar sound? In contrast, the Rabbit R1 does not conventionally function as a smartphone. It instead claims to be an AI-powered dedicated personal assistant and will be available for purchase at the end of March for $199.
“Our mobile devices are multifunctional, performing tasks such as capturing vacation photographs, providing us with an inexhaustible supply of short videos, and serving as personal organizers.” However, Jesse Lyu, founder and CEO of AI technology startup Rabbit, stated that is precisely the issue. He believes that the abundance of apps and features available on our smartphones has masked their simplicity, and with the R1, which debuted at CES 2024, he intends to change that.
In contrast to operating applications, user interaction with the R1 consists of pressing a physical push-to-talk button, which functions similarly to a walkie-talkie in that it initiates a song on Spotify or poses a query. Essentially, the software on the phone is driven by a big action model, which is an algorithm that can figure out how people use interfaces and apps and then automate those steps. Lyu compares it to assigning the task of ordering food delivery on your phone to a friend instead of doing so yourself.
Rabbit R1 AI Assistant:
Numerous virtual assistants are virtually capable of performing the functions that Rabbit’s R1 asserts it can. Additionally, Google and Amazon are integrating generative AI intelligence into their virtual assistants to make them better at processing complex requests. But Lyu realizes the need for a device designed specifically for productivity that is not connected to a mobile device and is, as a result, less distracting. His position is that a phone’s capability to perform the same task is only sometimes equivalent to a superior experience.
Considering how dependent we have become on our mobile devices, that argument will require considerable persuasion. 89% of Americans check their phones within the first ten minutes of waking up, and 60% sleep with their phones at night, according to a survey by Reviews.org. Nonetheless, the Rabbit R1, in addition to the AI pin recently unveiled by startup Humane, is further evidence that technology companies are focusing more and more on developing new devices with AI in mind. And numerous individuals have already been sufficiently enticed by Rabbit’s assurance to place an order for an R1. On January 10, the organization declared that 10,000 units were sold during the initial day of preorders.
The R1 has a straightforward appearance. Bright orange in color, with a relatively tiny display and scroll wheel, the R1 has an almost retro appearance. The R1 is remarkably compact and weighs less than half the weight of the average smartphone, as evidenced by the image of it resting on my iPhone 15 below. When closed, its dimensions and form resemble those of a flip phone, such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip or 2023 Motorola Razr, even though it is considerably lighter. The Rabbit R1 is approximately 50% the dimensions of the iPhone 15.
How is it different from smartphones?
Although the R1 exhibits certain physical resemblances to smartphones, including a touchscreen display and a camera, these components serve different purposes.
For instance, the R1 lacks a conventional phone operating system and instead displays cards in response to your queries on its 2.88-inch display. Rather than serving as a tool for documenting daily activities on Instagram, the camera’s purpose is to provide visual assistance by capturing images of items in one’s refrigerator to provide recipe ideas.
Despite not being designated as a phone, it is practical for making phone calls due to its Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity, SIM card port, and SIM card slot. It is equipped with a 2.3GHz MediaTek Helios P35 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage space.
The Rabbit R1 will do the work for you:
While lacking conventional applications, the R1 establishes connections with services to execute queries. To initiate an Uber ride or stream a Spotify playlist, you must establish a connection between those applications and your Rabbit account via an online portal. That could prove to be a laborious process, given that you would be required to connect each service manually for Rabbit to account for in its calculations. Rabbit states that authentication methods occur on the application’s system and that no login information is stored.
The device executes tasks utilizing Rabbit’s proprietary large action model and interprets spoken commands using OpenAI’s GPT-4 model. A person shared his interaction with R1. He told us, “During my brief time trying it, I asked the Rabbit R1 to play music and answer basic knowledge-based questions. The ears on the animated rabbit icon shown on the screen adorably perked up when I held the side button to recite my command. But I’ll need to spend more time with it before knowing how well it works as a personal assistant for getting things done more quickly and efficiently than my phone. ”
Rabbit’s Official Launched Video:
Here is the official launched video of the Rabbit Companion:
Rabbit undertakes an audacious endeavor with the R1 to establish a market for a unique technological device in a society saturated with displays and sensors. Nonetheless, developing new hardware in response to the growing interest in AI over the past year is intriguing. However, Rabbit’s software experience must be sufficiently persuasive to persuade you to purchase a new device instead of continuing to use ChatGPT, Google Bard, and other AI assistants on your existing devices.
