The developers of the sensational AI-powered “anti-smartphone” told how their gadget works
Rabbit, a startup that made a high-profile debut at CES 2024 in Las Vegas with the R1 miniature artificial intelligence gadget, has finally revealed what makes their device work.
The device has already sold out in several 10-thousand batches, but even after the presentation of Rabbit R1 at CES, it left many questions. In particular, it was not known whose developments made this little gadget work. Now Rabbit has revealed that it is working with Perplexity, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup that has received investments from NVIDIA and Jeff Bezos.
“We are pleased to announce our partnership with Rabbit: Together, we are seamlessly delivering accurate, real-time answers to Rabbit R1, powered by our state-of-the-art PPLX online LLM API, without any knowledge limitations.” – Perplexity announced on its X (Twitter).
As part of the cooperation, Rabbit and Perplexity have also agreed to provide the first 100 thousand customers who purchase R1 with a year’s free access to Perplexity Pro, which usually costs $200. This service provides access to AI models from different manufacturers (Perplexity, GPT-4, Claude 2.1, or Gemini).
Rabbit R1, unveiled in Las Vegas earlier this month, has a simple design (2.88-inch touchscreen, scroll wheel, two microphones, speaker, rotating camera and button) and innovative functionality. For $199, users get an AI assistant that can use many programs using only voice commands. It can order a taxi, look up recipes, check facts, and much more. The developers also claim that the device can be taught to perform any action in any program.
The gadget was in great demand immediately after its release: the startup sold two 10,000 batches within 48 hours of its presentation and is collecting pre-orders for the next batches to be delivered in the next few months.
