The Rabbit R1 announcement at CES left many questions unanswered, but earlier today the brand finally revealed which LLM (Large-Scale Language Model) powers the device’s interaction with us humans. I made it clear what I would do. His AI provider in question is none other than Perplexity, a San Francisco-based startup with ambitions of overtaking Google in the AI space. No wonder he has already received investments from the likes of NVIDIA and Jeff Bezos.
Perplexity provides up-to-date search results via Rabbit’s $199 orange brick, with no subscription required. However, the first 100,000 R1 buyers will receive a free year of Perplexity Pro subscription, which normally costs $200. This advanced service adds file upload support, his daily quota of over 300 complex queries, and the ability to switch to other AI models (GPT-4, Claude 2.1, or Gemini) . However, these do not necessarily apply to R1 use cases.
For those wondering:
Today we are announcing the use of Perplexity as one of r1’s primary LLM services. R1 does not yet require a subscription to benefit from this partnership.
The Perplexity Pro $200 credit is a standalone bonus provided by… https://t.co/qYMM7TKFyZ
— Rabbit Co., Ltd. (@rabbit_hmi) January 19, 2024
Designed by Teenage Engineering, the Rabbit R1 features a 2.88-inch touchscreen, scroll wheel, two microphones, speakers, a rotating camera, and a “push to talk” button. This specialized gadget leverages Large Action Models (LAM) to book rides, find recipes based on the ingredients you have, identify people and objects (including items in your refrigerator, for example), or simply You can perform tasks such as fact checking. We know it relies on Perplexity’s real-time search engine. R1 is currently available for pre-order ahead of his March/April shipping.