- Rabbit R1 AI box is actually an Android app in a limited $200 box, running on AOSP without Google Play.
- Rabbit Inc. is unhappy about details of its tech stack being public, threatening action against unauthorized emulators.
- AOSP is a logical choice for mobile hardware as it provides essential functionalities without the need for Google Play.
So it’s just a single app running on a minimal Android implementation, the AI is done on remote servers and it still gets lousy battery life? Sounds like they dropped the ball on design. Nevertheless, no one is going to carry this that doesn’t already have a phone that can do everything the Rabbit does. It has no reason to exist.
Yes, they have came out since this discovery saying that there is no ‘app’ and that the AI computed requests in the cloud.
These people basically found the connection to the cloud.
But yeah, stupid product that does practically nothing [that a phone cant].
The processing was done server-side as it is with the other thing. If you find a way to do it client-side let me know otherwise I’m not interested in your dumb product.
Spoiler: when they let you know about the better device, your phone will already be much better at the same client-side processing anyway.
Yes, but it’s also unauthenticated (it doesn’t verify it comes from the real device, or even run an account belonging to a device owner)
You just need the app
Until they inevitably shut it down
What, you aren’t excited about a future where everything is cloud computing spyware that sends all your activity to an AI to be analyzed and picked apart by strangers?
Programmed electronic revealed to be running a program?
No, revealed to not be specific design at all. The device is actually a terrible phone with less feature than a phone, nothing more. The app would likely run as-is on any Android phone with 100% of the feature provided.
Paying $200 for a bottom of the line smartphone that can’t smartphone is a bit much.
What do you mean not specific design? Android apps are just programs. What were any of you expecting it to be programmed with? A brand new programming language?
They were expecting it to not be Android, but something more custom. Like I feel even just bare bones Linux would’ve been more acceptable.
Linux isnt custom, its just another open source OS. This is ridiculous.
Dude it’s an android app they are trying to sell for $200. Why apologize for this thing? Get some better expectations.
You say android app like that makes it worthless. Its software they made running on hardware they designed.
Would you pay $200 for an android app?
This is not about the programming language nor the OS. It’s about masquerading a cheap butchered android phone as a brand new device. If it was some custom, optimized hardware to connect the main I/O (camera, touchscreen, buttons) to a piece of software that communicate with a remote server, it would justify the price. But as it is, it’s a borderline refurbished weak phone hardware sold for $200.
This is not about the programming language nor the OS
It’s about masquerading a cheap butchered android phone
Wait til you hear about what android is. Android isnt a company that makes phones.
I’m confused by this revelation. What did everybody think the box was?
It could have been a local AI and some special AI chip not found in all android phones, but since it is run in cloud, the privacy is really a problem
I think the issue is that people were expecting a custom (enough) OS, software, and firmware to justify asking $200 for a device that’s worse than a $150 phone in most every way.
I would expect bespoke software and OS in a $200 device to be way less impressive than what a multi billion dollar company develops.
Most of the processing is done server side though.
Same. As soon as I saw the list of apps they support, it was clear to me that they’re running Android. That’s the only way to provide that feature.
Custom hardware and software I guess?
Without thinking into it I would have expected some more custom hardware, some on device AI acceleration happening. For one to go and purchase the device it should have been more than just an android app
The best way to do on-device AI would still be a standard SoC. We tend to forget that these mass produced mobile SoCs are modern miracles for the price, despite the crapy software and firmware support from the vendors.
No small startup is going to revolutionize this space unless some kind of new physics is discovered.
I think the plausibility comes from the fact that a specialized AI chip could theoretically outperform a general purpose chip by several orders of magnitude, at least for inference. And I don’t even think it would be difficult to convert a NN design into a chip or that it would need to be made on a bleeding edge node to get that much more performance. The trade off would be that it can only do a single NN (or any NNs that single one could be adjusted to behave identically to, eg to remove a node you could just adjust the weights so that it never triggers).
So I’d say it’s more accurate to put it as “the easiest/cheapest way to do an AI device is to use a standard SoC”, but the best way would be to design a custom chip for it.
They’re not a chip manufacturer though, and modern phone processors are already fast enough to do near real time text generation and fast image generation (20 tokens/second llama 2, ~1 second for a distilled SD 1.5, on Snapdragon 8 Gen 3)
Unfortunately, the cheapest phones with that processor seem about $650, and the Rabbit R1 costs $200 and uses a MediaTek Helio P35 from late 2018.
Magic
In all reality, it is a ChatGPTitty "fine"tune on some datasets they hobbled together for VQA and Android app UI driving. They did the initial test finetune, then apparently the CEO or whatever was drooling over it and said “lEt’S mAkE aN iOt DeViCe GuYs!!1!” after their paltry attempt to racketeer an NFT metaverse game.
Neither this nor Humane do any AI computation on device. It would be a stretch to say there’s even a possibility that the speech recognition could be client-side, as they are always-connected devices that are even more useless without Internet than they already are with.
Make no mistake: these money-hungry fucks are only selling you food cans labelled as magic beans. You have been warned and if you expect anything less from them then you only have your own dumbass to blame for trusting Silicon Valley.
If the Humane could recognise speech on-device, and didn’t require its own data plan, I’d be reasonably interested, since I don’t really like using my phone for structuring my day.
I’d like a wearable that I can brain dump to, quickly check things without needing to unlock my phone, and keep on top of schedule. Sadly for me it looks like I’ll need to go the DIY route with an esp32 board and an e-ink display, and drop any kind of stt + tts plans
Sadly for me it looks like I’ll need to go the DIY route with an esp32 board and an e-ink display, and drop any kind of stt + tts plans
Latte Panda 2 or just wait a couple years. It’ll happen eventually because it’s so obvious it’s literally unpatentable.
Isn’t Lemmy supposed to be tech savvy? What do people think the vast majority of Linux OSs are? They’re derivatives of a base distribution. Often they’re even derivatives of a derivative.
Did people think a startup was going to build an entire OS from scratch? What would even be the benefit of that? Deriving Android is the right choice here. This R1 is dumb, but this is not why.
This is the business equivalent of throwing a tantrum.
I defend a lot of misunderstood ai but this doesn’t have any good qualities even if it wasn’t a scam
I would like to run the apk, anyone got the app download?
lmao threatening action against their own imminent irrelevance, more like
Not cool guys, not cool at all
And get serious - fuck your “proprietary” details, fuck lying/misrepresentation for money, and fuck you for trying a stunt like this.
•Rabbit Inc. is unhappy about details of its tech stack being public, threatening action against unauthorized emulators.
All android devices are “emulators” like their hardware isn’t special
I mean, isn’t all software just an app that runs on hardware?
Next you’re going to tell me that lemmy is one of these dirty dirty apps
Lemmy is a dirty, dirty app, but that’s not why!
their page to link accounts to it was not a real webapp, it was a novnc page that would connect to an ubuntu vm that runs chrome with no sandboxing and basic password store under fluxbox wm
someone dumped the home directory from it
Well that’s horrific.
Holy shit, that’s actually hilarious, I imagine someone would have noticed when their paste/auto type password managers didn’t work
For those confused, this sounds like instead of making a real website, they spin up a vm, embed a remote desktop tool into their website and have you login through chrome running on their VM, this is sooooo sketch it, its unreal anyone would use this in a public product.
Imagine if to sign into facebook from an app, you had to go to someone else’s computer, login and save your credentials on their PC, would that be a good idea?
What I don’t understand is why. This sounds like way more work than spinning up some out-of-the-box framework with oAuth or a Google login and hosting it on Lambda or Azure. What is logging in on a VM box even going to do for the device?
I’ve looked it up and it’s even uglier and I can kinda understand why they did it this way Basically, for their “integrations” they aren’t using any official APIs. Instead they just use the websites and automate them via the Playwright framework. So for each user they have a VM running with a Chrome browser to access the services. So now they have the problem that they need to get their users session cookies into the browser. And the easiest solution for that is having the users access their VM via VNC and just log into the automated browser.
This is such a hacky solution that I’m actually in awe of it’s shittiness. That’s something you throw together in an all-nighter during a Hackathon, not a production ready solution
I wish I knew what any of this meant…
It basically implies that they cobbled together some standard technology but they didn’t even put it together very well.
It’s like a solution that’s held in place with chewing gum and Band-Aids.
Ubuntu is just a bunch of apps running on Debian! Did you know you can take Ubuntu app .deb files and run them on Debian?
Look. The R1 is stupid, but this isn’t the reason why.
Such a bad comparison. In the case of Debian and Ubuntu apps you run both apps on your hardware you already have. In case of rabbit, you could just run app on your phone instead of buying rabbit. Rabbit does not offer anything more than their app does when installed on android phone. It’s even better on android phone because phone is faster.
The difference here is Ubuntu is open about the fact that stand on the shoulders of something greater than them.
R1 in contrast pretend that everything they’ve built is proprietary, and therefore no one could possibly come up with something similar.
When it’s clearly not the case.
This is critical, not for the purpose of sales, but for the purpose of retaining investor value.
The whole thing reeks of an exercise to generate artificial investor value.
If investors find out that their so-called innovation can actually be done by anyone with some coding skills and connectivity to open AI, then the company value will drop like a hot turd.
What? .deb aren’t app files they are debian packages
What are you talking about? The article didn’t mention Ubuntu once
Ubuntu is a piece of software. R1 is supposedly a piece of hardware that runs “Rabbit OS”.
I heard someone even leaked the apk LMAO that’s hilarious that your 200 dollar product can be literally pirated
Does the apk have unlimited access to Perplexity AI?
Eh, it’s pretty useless without the subscription anyway
Didn’t the bunny don’t have any subscription?
You wouldn’t download a bunny…
I would stew a bunny…
It’s so weird how they’re just insisting it isn’t an android app even though people have proven it is. Who do they expect to believe them?
Investors who don’t bother reading past the letters A and I in the prospectus.
‘Android’ is a certification with requirements in installed Google apps and homscreen links, so there’s that.
They are technically not wrong when they say that the whole experience isn’t made up of just an App
They are intentionally dodging the ACTUAL question.
Anyways here is a leak of their “LAM”, which is just playwright for the most part. https://web.archive.org/web/20240424133441if_/https://pixeldrain.com/api/file/vYHXbUwP?download
With that, we have both components, yay?
You know, pairing an LLM with Playright is actually a pretty great idea. But that’s something I can totally roll on my own.
Their target audience are the most gullible tech evangelists in the world that think AI is magic. If there was a limit to the lies those people are willing to believe, they wouldn’t be buying the thing to begin with.
This will flop though. So will the stupid Humane pin.
Either there are very few people that gullible or that group isn’t quite as gullible as you think.
The same question was asked a million times during the crypto boom. “They’re insisting that [some-crypto-project] is a safe passive income when people have proven that it’s a ponzi scheme. Who do they expect to believe them?” And the answer is, zealots who made crypto (or in this case, AI) the basis of their entire personality.
In this case the same people made both, so they are already practiced
They have thought of a specific design for the device using its own interaction modality and created a product that is more than just software.
Therefore don’t get why people refer to it being just an app? Does it make it worth less, because it runs on Android? Many devices, e.g. e-readers are just Android Apps as well. If it works it works.
In this case it doesn’t, so why not focus on that?
The point being, they are charging 200 bucks for hardware that is superfluous and low end for an incomplete software experience that could be delivered without that on an app. The question is, are you going to give up your smartphone for this new device? Are you going to carry both? Probably not.
“It can do 10% of the shit your phone can do, only slower, on a smaller screen, with its own data connection, and inaccurately because you have to hope that our “AI” is sufficiently advanced to understand a command, take action on that command, and respond in a short amount of time. And that’s not to even speak about the horrible privacy concerns or that it’s a brick without connection!”
Everything about this project seems lackluster at best, other than maybe the aesthetic design from teenage engineering, but even then, their design work seems a bit repetitive. But that may be due to how the company is asking for the work. “We wanna be like Nothing and Playdate!!” “I gotchu fam!”
To address your point about e-readers, they have specific use cases. Long battery lives, large, efficient e-ink displays, and the convenience of having all your books, or a large subset, available to you offline! But when those things aren’t a concern, yea, an app will do.
Like with most contemporary product launches, I simply find myself asking, “Who is this for?”
I mean I have an eReader but most of the time I’m too lazy to go find it and my Kindle app works just fine. I am eyeing those eink phones though…
They’ve said they are working on integration with other apps, and have said the ultimate goal is the AI could create its own interface for any app. I dunno if that’s gonna happen but if it did it would be closer to an actual assistant, imagine “rabbit, log onto my work schedule app and check my vacation hours” or “rabbit, compare prices for a SanDisk 256 gig memory card on Amazon, eBay, and Newegg”.
More than likely it’ll just fuck it all up but that’s the dream I think.
It’s an experimental device and by buying it you invest into r&d. It’s not meant to replace a smartphone as of now, but similar ones eventually will.
My point stands, because they are offering a completely new (but obv lacking) experience with novel design solutions. What they made is a toy, which is not really unusual for teenage engineering. But if they do as they did with other devices in the past this thing might actually rock in the future. They are not inexperienced and usually over super long support for their devices.
TE is way older than Nothing and Playdate btw…
It’s an experimental device and by buying it you invest into r&d.
This is laughably untrue. By buying this you’ve proven to them that their marketing oriented approach to product development is correct, and that customers will throw away good money on half-designed, disposable shit.
By the looks of this shitty project, they spent most of their money on design idiots that think they’re the next coming of Steve Jobs, and blathering marketing morons that think if they say AI and “the future” enough that it doesn’t matter that the products they actually deliver are half-done, also-ran, clout-chasing garbage with hardware from the clearance section of Alibaba.
Why even try to sell me another device though?
Anything and everything this square does, my phone can do better already and has the added benefit of already being in my pocket and not a pain in the ass to use.
Because, you know, technological development? Someone has to fund R&D, because it’s not cheap. And in 10 years everyone will have similar ai-enhanced devices. No one thought smartphones will make it back in the days as well. And I’m already looking forward to the time when I don’t have to look down anymore to get information
And in 10 years everyone will have similar ai-enhanced devices.
In 10 years (or actually 0 years because it’s already kinda true) people will have an AI enhanced device… And it’ll be their phone.
Also, you’re arguing something I’m going to name the inevitability fallacy (for my own amusement). It’s not inevitable that everyone will have one of these particular type of devices in the same way it wasn’t inevitable that everyone would start watching 3d TV in their houses.
This is just another in a long line of things that supply side economics driven companies are trying to sell us. There’s next to no need or demand for this thing, and there’s no guarantee that there will be.
No, they’re not.
An ereader is a piece of hardware that has a distinct purpose that cannot be matched by other hardware (high quality, high contrast, low power draw static content). Some of them do run Android, and that’s a huge value add. But the actual hardware is the reason it exists.
This is just a dogshit Android phone. There is no unique hardware niche it’s filling. It’s an extremely obvious scam that is very obviously massively downgraded in all of value, utility, and performance by being forced onto separate hardware.
my honda is just android software, if thats the only part you look at too.
No it’s not. Your Honda has several different computers in it, only on of which is likely to be running Android.
This is more like someone offering a “brand new method of personal travel” to replace your car, but it turns out that it’s just an old Honda with only one seat, a fuel tank that only holds 10L, and a custom navigation app. There’s nothing it does that your Honda can’t do better, and you won’t want to replace your Honda with this.
true but we all have tons of successful devices that are secretly like this, smart doorbells and flood lights and watches etc. we also have all seen terrible ones. its the implementation that isn’t magical.
A lot of those smart devices are nothing but a waste of rare earth elements. I don’t think switching on your lights remotely, or starting your car engine with an app are “features”. This is consumerist bullshit that we can very well live without any meaningful change in quality of life.
There are disruptors, that truly bring something new to the table, and then you have smart dildos.
What’s your problem with smart dildos?
It’s the Juicero strategy.
“You can’t squeeze our juice packs! Only our special machine can properly squeeze our juice packs for optimal taste!”
Reviewer proceeds to squeeze more juice out with their hands than the machine managed.
Ahh, the good ol’ days, before we knew how batshit AvE was.
I’m assuming you’re talking about the YouTuber; It’s been since before the pandemic that I’ve watched AvE, what did he do?
Leaned hard into anti-vax and sympathizing with the Canadian trucker protests, and made it a fairly prominent part of his videos. Not entirely surprising that he held some of the views, but he got high on his own LIBERTARIAN!!! supply and started thinking that if he thought it, his audience must want to hear it.
Ah, what a shame, he had some good stuff.
lol at calling running Android an “emulator”.
Also don’t they have to distribute the actual code for the OS if it’s lightly altered Android?
My understanding is that if you only add modules on top, those can stay closed source. It’s possible the AOSP portion of the stack is still stock and untouched.
I don’t know, one of the reasons they’re decrying everyone running the APK is they claim they’ve made a bunch of “bespoke alterations” to the AOSP version they’re using
Which may or may not be BS intended to save their reputation. I hear you though.
AOSP is fully Apache-2.0 licensed except for the Linux kernel, so only their kernel changes would have to be. It’s also an important reason why Android was/is so successful.
