Rabbit R1

The Rabbit r1 is a personal assistant device developed by tech startup Rabbit Inc and co-designed by Teenage Engineering. It is designed to perform various functions, including browsing the web and playing music, using voice commands and touch interaction, allowing AI to be used to provide services commonly associated with smartphones, such as ordering food delivery. The device runs an operating system based on Android, and its AI services are powered by ChatGPT.

Rabbit Inc was started by Jesse Lyu Cheng.

Hardware

* Display: A 2.88-inch touchscreen for interactive user input.
* Input: push-to-talk button to activate voice commands; scroll wheel; Gyroscope; Magnetometer; Accelerometer; GPS.
* Camera: 8 MP single camera, with a resolution of 3264x2448, allowing for the connected external AI to use computer vision.
* Audio: Equipped with a speaker and dual microphones for audio interaction.
* Connectivity: Supports Wi-Fi and cellular connections via a SIM card slot to access internet services.
* Processor: Runs on a 2.3GHz MediaTek Helio P35 processor.
* Memory: Contains 4GB of RAM for operational tasks.
* Storage: Offers 128GB of internal storage for data.
* Ports: Utilizes a USB-C port for charging and data connections.

Software

The Rabbit r1 runs on Rabbit OS, based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), specifically version 13. Lyu has claimed that Rabbit OS runs with a "very bespoke AOSP."

The device employs a large action model (LAM) designed to perform actions and assist with tasks like web searches, streaming music, and transportation services. Perplexity.ai, an AI search engine, is one of the Large Language Models (LLM) used to respond to user queries and execute commands. The personal assistant is also capable of various actions such as ordering a cab or playing music from Spotify. This is through the "connections" system on the account management site, which the assistant calls "rabbits".

Rabbit issued 15 software updates within the first four months after releasing r1. On July 11, 2024, Rabbit launched the "beta rabbit" advanced search and conversation assistant to "give more thoughtful responses to complex questions that require multiple steps of research and deeper reasoning".

Reception

Funding

Rabbit raised $20 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, Synergis Capital and Kakao Investment in October 2023. The company announced an additional $10 million in funding in December 2023.

Sales

Following its announcement at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show, 130,000 units were sold. On August 13, 2024, Rabbit announced that sales of r1 had expanded to the entire European Union (except Malta) and United Kingdom. On August 21, 2024, sales of r1 expanded to Singapore.

Reviews

The r1 was met with strong criticism immediately after Rabbit began shipping the device. Some reviews questioned what the device was able to do that a smartphone could not, while comparing it to the similar Humane Ai Pin. YouTuber Marques Brownlee called the device "barely reviewable". ''Android Authoritys Mishaal Rahman managed to install Rabbit r1's software on a Pixel 6a smartphone, after a tipster shared an APK file. ''The Verge'' echoed the claims made by Rahman. In response, Lyu published statements confirming its use of Android, but denying that the r1 is an Android app. Mashable called its Vision features impressive, but said that "these praise-worthy features are overshadowed by buggy performance".'' Ars Technica'' wrote a blog post claiming "the company is blocking access from bootleg APKs". TechCrunch gave a slightly more positive review, calling the device a "fun peep at a possible future", but could not "advise anyone to buy one now."

Shortly after the launch of r1, Rabbit began a weekly cadence of software updates to address much of the criticism from the early reviews, including "battery and GPS performance, time zone selection, and more". Digital Trends said the Magic Camera feature "takes the most mundane, ordinary, and badly composed photos and makes something fun and eye-catching from them. Mashable said the "beta rabbit" feature "makes Rabbit R1 more conversational and intelligent".

Controversies

GAMA project

Rabbit Inc has garnered attention due to allegations surrounding its funding and the company's past projects. The company came under scrutiny when Stephen Findeisen, known as Coffeezilla on YouTube, published a video in May 2024, alleging that Rabbit Incorporation was "built on a scam". Rabbit Incorporation, initially named Cyber Manufacturing Co, rebranded just two months before launching the Rabbit R1. The company, under its former name, raised $6 million in November 2021 for a project called GAMA, described as a "Next Generation NFT Project." Jesse Lyu, the CEO of Rabbit Incorporation, referred to GAMA as a "fun little project."

Coffeezilla, who investigates influencer scams, highlighted old Clubhouse recordings of Jesse Lyu discussing the GAMA project. In these recordings, Lyu emphasized the substantial funding behind GAMA and its potential to be a revolutionary, carbon-negative cryptocurrency. Coffeezilla questioned the whereabouts of the funds raised for GAMA, estimating that approximately $1 million in refunds to investors remained unresolved. He suggested that the rebranding to Rabbit Incorporation and the shift to developing the Rabbit R1 were attempts to divert from the GAMA project's issues.

In response to Coffeezilla's inquiries, Rabbit Incorporation stated that the $6 million raised was used for the GAMA project. The company said that NFTs cannot be refunded unless the owner agrees to "burn" them on the blockchain. Rabbit Incorporation also said that the GAMA project was open-sourced and returned to the community, aligning with community feedback. They also mentioned that efforts to buy back NFTs were made to counteract malicious trading and maintain market stability.

Security

In June 2024, Engadget reported that the Rabbitude team, a community reverse engineering project, had gained access to the r1's codebase revealing that r1's software contained several hardcoded API keys in its code for ElevenLabs, Microsoft Azure, Yelp, and Google Maps, potentially allowing unauthorized access to r1 responses, including those containing the users' personal information. For a short time, Rabbit immediately began revoking and rotating those secrets and confirmed that the code was leaked by an employee who had "been terminated and remains under investigation".

On June 26, 2024, a YouTuber known as Bringus Studios was able to hack the r1 to run stock Android.

In July 2024, the company revealed that all user chats and device pairing data were logged on the r1 with no ability to delete them. This meant that lost or stolen devices could be used to extract user data. The company stated that it addressed the issue by introducing a factory reset option and limited the data stored on the r1, as well as preventing paired devices from reading data.

References

{{Reflist
Consumer electronics
Machine learning
Applications of artificial intelligence
Android (operating system) devices