Jesse Liu, CEO and founder of an AI startup called Rabbit, says he doesn't want to buy a new smartphone. At least not right now. His company's new gadget, his $199 standalone AI device called R1, is so astonishingly ambitious that Lyu seems to think he can't do it. help However, at some point you should replace your phone. It's not complete yet.
(Updated January 10th at 4:45pm ET: Rabbit Announced that the first production run of 10,000 R1 units has already been sold out.And we're currently accepting pre-orders for our second shipment in the spring. )
The R1 looks a bit like a Playdate console, or an updated version of a '90s handheld TV. It's a standalone gadget about half the size of an iPhone, with a 2.88-inch touchscreen, a rotating camera for taking photos and videos, and a scroll wheel/button that you press for navigation and talking to the device's built-in assistant. Masu. It has a rounded body designed in collaboration with design company Teenage Engineering, and is equipped with a 2.3GHz MediaTek processor, 4GB of memory, and 128GB of storage. All Rabbit says about the battery is that it lasts “all day.”
I spent a few minutes with the R1 after the Rabbit launch event, and it's an impressive piece of hardware. He only had one device that actually worked (Lyu's), but his Wi-Fi at the hotel was spotty, so I couldn't do much with that one. However, the R1 is surprisingly light and feels much better than it looks in the photo. The buttons are clicky and satisfying, which is to be expected from Teenage Engineering, and the whole thing fits well in my grip. It's definitely a fingerprint magnet.
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The software inside R1 is the real story. Rabbit's operating system, called Rabbit OS, and the underlying AI technology. According to Rabbit, Rabbit OS is based on a “large-scale action model” rather than a large-scale language model like his ChatGPT, and is best described as a kind of universal his controller for apps. “We wanted to find a universal solution, similar to large-scale language models,” he says. “How do we find a universal solution to actually trigger a service, regardless of website or app, platform or desktop?”
In spirit, the idea is similar to Alexa or Google Assistant. Rabbit OS lets you control your music, order your car, buy groceries, send messages, and more all through a single interface. No need to balance apps or logins. Just ask for what you need and your device will provide it. R1's on-screen interface is his base card for a series of categories such as music, transportation, and video chat, and Lyu says most of the screen exists so you can see the model's output for yourself. … apparently …
However, rather than building a ton of APIs and convincing developers to support R1, Rabbit trained a model on how to use existing apps themselves. Large-Scale Action Models (LAMs) are trained by the humans who operate apps like Spotify and Uber, essentially telling the models how the apps should work. LAM learned what the settings icon looks like, how to tell when an order is confirmed, and where the search menu is. All of this can be applied to any app, anywhere, says Lyu.
R1 also has a dedicated training mode that you can use to teach the device how to do something, and in the future it will be able to repeat that action on its own. Lyu gives an example. “'Hey, first, try going to a software called Photoshop. Open it. Get your photo from here. Create a lasso over the watermark and click click click click. This is how to remove the watermark. Rabbit OS will take 30 seconds to process, after which all watermarks will be automatically removed, Lyu says.
However, how all this actually works is the real question. In addition to a few things you can do with R1 itself, there's a web portal called Rabbit Hole that lets you log into all of its various services. And if you want to teach a device how to use Photoshop, for example, you can start one of Rabbit's virtual machines and teach it there, rather than using your own device and software. But it can be difficult to properly understand how it works for many users and many devices and platforms.
What ChatGPT is to web search and what Rabbit OS is to app stores
Rabbit's approach here is very clever. Getting someone to support a new operating system is difficult, even for tech giants, but LAM's method reverses that problem by simply teaching the model how to use the app. More broadly, new AI-powered hardware continues to hit the market, but in many cases, these gadgets simply connect to chatbots. In contrast, Rabbit is more like a super app, a single interface that lets you do just about anything. It can be what Rabbit OS is to the app store what ChatGPT is to web search. Of course, the dream has many complications and caveats, but it is an interesting dream.
However, listening to Lyu talk about Rabbit OS and R1, it's not entirely clear what the company's vision for this device actually is. It's not powerful enough to replace a mobile phone, but it does allow video calls and has a slot for a SIM card. Although this is primarily a voice assistant, the device does have a screen and a camera.it's not just Voice Assistant…but has many features of a voice assistant. Rabbit says he designed Rabbit OS with security and privacy in mind, but some of the most commonly used services require you to log in through its interface. In Lyu's view, the R1 is both a nifty accessory and a future where almost everything is all-in-one.
The R1 is available for pre-order now, and Lyu said the device will begin shipping in March. He even thinks that Humane's guy might be able to bring AI Pin to market, and maybe he even wants it.
Updated January 9th at 2:40pm ET: We've added a keynote video, image gallery, and some new information about how R1 works.
