Rabbit R1: gimmicky AI gadget will never kill the iPhone

I wrote back in February that I was looking forward to getting my hands on a Rabbit R1. Mine arrived here in England on the 24th of June, and I set it up on the 27th. So I’ve now had nearly two weeks to get to grips with it. Here are my first impressions.

For a start, I really like the Swedish hardware design. The R1 feels good in the hand, slips into a pocket and repels dirt. My wife hates the bright orange colour, but I like it - I won’t lose it because I can’t see it, even in a snowstorm.

But the software needs a lot of work. Rabbit is upgrading the software every Thursday, and it definitely needs to. Connections to your existing accounts are through the 'Rabbit Hole' web site. but so far, these are limited to:

• Music using Apple Music or Spotify
• Ride Sharing using Uber.
• Food delivery using DoorDash
• Generative AI using Midjourney for images and Suno to generate music

All of these, except Suno, require paid accounts, and the setup appears to use a VNC remote session to the service – which is quite clunky. And to add to the fun, Apple Music and Uber do not yet work in England.

The basic way to get anything done is to press the grey button and ask the R1 to do something. it responds mostly using the free version of Perplexity AI search engine, but can also get answers from Wolfram Alpha.

The quality of answers varies enormously - from informative to hilariously wrong. For example, if I ask what the weather is like, it insists on telling me what it is in Birmingham, Alabama. Sometimes, it decides I am in Birmingham, England. Neither is very helpful, because I am actually in Trowbridge, Wiltshire. it also insists on telling me the temperature in Fahrenheit. I can get it to convert to Centigrade, and it promises to use that in future, then promptly forgets to do so.

If I ask it where I can get the cheapest petrol within ten miles, it knows where I really am, but invents an Asda petrol station and price that doesn’t exist. Rabbit technical support assure me that there is a GPS chip in the device, but it is not yet properly integrated, especially for use outside the USA.

For fun, double-clicking the grey button turns on the camera, which can be switched between front- and back-facing using the scroll wheel. You can ask questions about what the R1 is seeing and it will answer, including, for example, identifying plants.

Even more fun, clicking the grey button will take a picture. Everything you do gets logged in a journal in the Rabbit Hole. That’s where you go to see the “magic” that taking a picture performs. For example, I attended an outdoor production of Macbeth, which took place in a downpour of rain. Here is the photo I took and the magic version (note the rabbit!): 

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Somewhat to my surprise, although I have a phone sim in the R1, it can’t do phone calls or SMS messages. Rabbit technical support assure me the capabilities exist, but don’t know when we will see them.

So, at the moment. the R1 is really only a gimmicky gadget, but it has the potential to be a lot more. The most important missing feature is Teach Mode, using the Large Action Model (LAM) to train R1 to know its way around your smartphone apps. Technical support assure me that it will be released this year, but so far, there is no sign of it. If Rabbit can get that to work, I believe the R1 will find enough business niches to become viable, but it will never kill the iPhone.