rabbit r1 Unboxing and Hands-on

Now here's a tough test

What is this? Taking a look now, I see a dog in the image

It appears to be a fluffy, long-haired chihuahua, or a similar small dog

He's very specific. The dog is sitting on one-house like a wooden or laminate floor

That's exactly what she is, though, a long-haired chihuahua. That's exactly what she is, Jack says

That is a long-haired chihuahua by the name of Marissa. So in this box is one of the very first Rabbit R1 AI smart devices

I am curious to try this out. I remember when it was announced. Obviously, I watched the keynote

I saw the different voice-based instructions and behaviors of the device. And I also saw industrial design, which in this case kind of has cool, retro look to it

Patch and a pin. Very small. AI Companion. One piece of dense foam and actually very cool packaging

Quite futuristic. Wow, that orange is extremely vibrant. I mean, you almost feel like you do not want to throw this out

The speaker, the scroll wheel, the rabbit eye. Very unique hardware. We have Type-C

You can see it booting up. What's fun about this is it does remind me

of a different era in tech where everything wasn't a smartphone, where there were different devices

that did different things and had different form factors. This wheel is not clicky, it's very smooth

but it has some weight to it. It has a little bit of resistance. All right, so it's asking for me to go to rabbit.tech

in order to activate this device. I'm gonna go do that and we'll come back and start testing this thing out

All right, so I have the device booted up now And it is important to note at this point that this is very early days

In fact, I think I'm in possession of the first unit at this point that I'm filming this

Even in the time that I've had this, it's had multiple updates. Things will change and it's obviously part of a long and ongoing project in order to deliver the full breadth of what this technology will eventually be capable of

So the intended use here is voice. Essentially, an assistant. give you responses to questions, utilize its built-in camera to identify things

and eventually figure out a way to integrate with a variety of different applications that you use on a regular basis

Some of the connections that exist at this point, DoorDash, Midjourney, Spotify, and Uber

I'll give you a quick example of how that works. Play Daft Punk on Spotify

On it, I'll get the music going for you. Now, obviously, I can't play too much of that for copyright reasons

album artwork. So that's an example of an integration that currently exists, but you

could imagine that expanding to a variety of other things But let just start out a little bit more simple and ask a couple of questions Who are the Toronto Maple Leafs The Toronto Maple Leafs are a professional ice hockey team based in Toronto Ontario Canada

The team was established in 1917 and is one of the original six teams of the NHL

Now the next thing I'm going to do is speak to the assistant without context

in order to follow up on the previous question. Who is the best player? The Toronto Maple Leafs have a rich history with many iconic players

According to the search results, some of the best players in the team's history include Dave Keon

Sil Apps, Ted Kennedy, Johnny Bauer, Tim Horton, Boris Salming, Daryl Siddler

To determine the current best player, one would need to consider recent performance statistics

individual awards, and team success. Pretty impressive. It's very detailed. Detailed to an extent that you're not really getting out of the existing assistant software

that you probably have on your phone. This is not an assistant that's triggered via voice

Instead, it's all via this mechanical button. Now, to get into the interface, I shake

I end up with this menu, options for brightness, which I can hold and adjust in this manner

It's an interesting interface. And if you're familiar with teenage engineering designed products, it's kind of familiar

If I want to change the volume of the voice, I hold and scroll. It's a two-stage situation

I have it at max right now. You do actually have a screen-based input by flipping the device like this

And here you can see a keyboard that pops up. We flip it the other way and we snap back

The other cool thing there is the continual language, not having to reiterate the previous question

but being able to just build on it, like the three consecutive Toronto Maple Leafs questions

And it will remember it even right now. Who had the most goals this season

The player who scored the most goals for the Toronto Maple Leafs in the current season is Austin Matthews

He has been a key goal scorer for the team and has consistently performed at a high level throughout the season

Now you can actually clear the memory of the device by tapping this button five times

The other interesting thing that's on here is this camera or what they're calling the eye

So if I double tap this button, I get vision that pops up and I'm going to bring over a couple of objects

This is a pretty easy one. What am I looking at? You are looking at a Wilson NBA basketball

The basketball has the Wilson logo and branding prominently displayed on it

as well as the NBA logo, indicating that this is an official NBA basketball

What am I looking at? You are looking at a potted plant with green grass-like leaves in a gray pot on a wooden table

In the background, there is a person wearing a gray shirt and a desk setup with computer monitors

It's the detail. It's actually almost like unexpected detail. I can even take some text that's on my phone

Read this out loud. Taking a look now. Frank McCauley is deeply proud of his Italian roots McCauley established a home and business in Woodbridge Ontario A short drive from Toronto and his commercial plumbing operation soon provided him with financial success

With equally desirable motorcycles... I mean, it'll go on. Like, that is a relatively fast reading and conversion of an article on a phone

Now here's a tough test. What is this? Taking a look now, I see a dog in the image

It appears to be a fluffy, long-haired chihuahua or similar small dog

Very specific. The dog is sitting on what looks like a wooden or laminate floor

Marissa, the long-haired chihuahua, R1, was able to identify that. What should I do if I'm looking for a fun activity on a Saturday night in the Toronto area

Fun activities to do on a Saturday night in the Toronto area include testing your limits at CN Towers Edge Walk

enjoying a rooftop cocktail at the Drake Hotel, exploring the Scarborough Bluffs

singing karaoke at a bar, stopping to smell the flowers at Allen Gardens

And speed is going to be key here. In order to have widespread adoption

it's going to have to happen fast, feel comfortable, and casual. And that's sort of what that response was

Now, is there a way that I can follow up on that? I need to do something cheap, not expensive

For budget-friendly options, on a Saturday night in the Toronto area, you could consider having a picnic at Trinity Bellwoods Park

Exploring the distillery district, attending a... Moe's just sitting over there nodding right now

You see what I'm saying? You see what I'm saying? Some of these things are free

Moe didn't realize by moving his desk, now he's this guy. Now he's always available

Maybe that's what he was going for. Hey, those first few things sounded kind of expensive

Can you give me a cheap option? It went and found like five of them

It's very fun to experiment with. I know a lot of people are going to have a lot of ideas and opinions

What kind of place it's going to hold because you have a phone. And this is kind of a different style of interaction

But a lot of the tasks end up being similar things to what you do on your phone, but just differently and more conversational

Now, me, I'm an early adopter. So if I see this thing and I'm sort of willing to go on that ride and recognize that it's not going to be everything today, that it can hopefully be eventually

But I personally was very, very excited about interfaces that are mostly voice based and require less screen time, essentially less time where you're captivated by your display and more time that you're sort of looking around and interacting with the world

Voice presents that opportunity and AI assistants are the way in which we get there

So those subtle differences in approach, the understanding of context, conversational component, that will be the key for my personal usage

and I think eventually widespread adoption. Now the next way to sort of supercharge your assistant is via something called LAM which is being integrated into this device That large action models which is different than language models This is the ability to sort of dictate an eventual action that your AI

assistant will take. So this OS is powered by two types of AI models, large language models and large

action models. The language model is responsible for understanding what you're saying. And then

obviously the action model is responsible for the action that takes place. So that's sort of the

ultimate AI experience. And I think it is the more difficult and ambitious aspect is how do you go

from having an assistant that is strictly language based and towards actually executing tasks on your

behalf. So I watched the keynote just like you did. I saw some of these activities like booking

vacations and ordering food from DoorDash. And these are comprehensive tasks. And we can see a

million ways in which these could be overly complex. And I do think that they will be difficult to

implement, but they will be sort of beta or early phase considering they represent this new type of

AI interaction. So the other thing that came up in our discussions here at the studio is just like

why does this exist? Why do we have this bright orange square, nice looking square and a cool

unboxing experience? And it's pretty much anything teenage engineering goes near is beautiful to

interact with. But why do we need something physical? Why do we have to have some physical

hardware instead of just an application, say, on a smartphone. It's hard to get people excited

about something that's strictly software-based. If you look at all the thumbnails and all the hype

surrounding this particular device, this bright orange block has gotten people interested in a new

method for interaction. What the hardware represents is an opportunity to get people

excited in a new input method, which is no longer touch-based and no longer app-based

Is this thing still a relatively fringe tech experiment? Yes, in some ways, yes

But for those people that are early adopters like myself or interested in trying new technology and possibly changing the way they interact, it could be an interesting and exciting piece of hardware

Now, the other thing worth talking about is price. There are some other devices that compete with this one that launched at much higher prices

They're coming in at $199, and sure, you can get a full-blown smartphone for $199

I don't think this fills the same space, targeted at people who want to play with something new

and enjoy the idea of experimenting with a new platform, with a new interface

after however many years we've spent, with kind of a singular approach to computing

which is the touchscreen-based smartphone. I think anybody who's interested in purchasing this already has a smartphone and understands, to a certain extent, what they're getting into

An early step towards our eventual computing future. You have to admit it's pretty

You have to admit