Your smartphone’s days might be numbered. At least, that’s the idea with the R1, a device powered by artificial intelligence from AI startup Rabbit. The device was first introduced at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show where it quickly made waves for its bold and innovative interface and design—along with its complete and total embrace of AI.
The R1 is roughly half the size of an iPhone but works entirely using Rabbit’s “large action model” AI. Instead of interacting with individual apps and websites on a smartphone, users will instead be able to use voice commands to do everything that they want to do from ordering an Uber, to planning a trip abroad, to playing a song on Spotify.
Think of it as a kind of universal remote control for every single one of your apps.
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“The R1 is a fully standalone device primarily driven by natural language,” Rabbit founder and CEO Jesse Lyu said in a keynote address. “The accumulation of countless hours of work from our research, design, and software teams. It is simple to use. R1 is equipped with everything you need to interact with you and perceive your surroundings.”
The device includes a touchscreen, analog scroll wheel, bluetooth capabilities, and an AI-enabled camera dubbed the “Rabbit Eye.” To use the device, users need to push and hold a button on its side like a walkie talkie that allows them to prompt the R1 with questions and commands.
Lyu claims that the R1 is able to produce a response that’s 10 times faster than “most of the voice AI products” and can answer questions within half a second. In demonstrations, Lyu is able to ask questions about the nature of reality, find the stock price of Coca-Cola, and play the song “Never Going to Give You Up” by Rick Astley after snapping a photo of the singer.
Users need to connect the apps on a web browser before utilizing any of these features—so it’s not quite as easy as just downloading Postmates or Uber on the R1. However, once it’s connected, the user will be able to use voice commands to perform any task that you would otherwise need to scroll through an app for.
It might seem a tad gimmicky—but it’s proven to be a runaway hit at CES. In just one day, Rabbit announced that the R1 sold out its first 10,000 units in pre-orders alone. The next day, the company then opened pre-orders for a second batch of 10,000 units and sold that out too.
“When we started building r1, we said internally that we’d be happy if we sold 500 devices on launch day,” Rabbit said in an X post. “In 24 hours, we already beat that by 20x!”
Only time will tell whether or not the Rabbit R1 is the smartphone killer it’s setting out to be. However, one thing is for sure: AI is coming to our devices in a very big way. On the heels of Rabbit’s news, Samsung also announced that its newest line of Galaxy S24 phones would be infused with AI to do everything from transcribing and translating phone calls, to generating images to edit your photos. Likewise, Google’s latest Pixel 8 phone is also packed with AI-enabled features to allow users to do the same.
AI has come for our devices. If the Rabbit R1 has anything to say about it, the technology will do away with our smartphones for good.
