The hotly anticipated AI assistant Rabbit R1 is set to begin shipping to US buyers this week.
According to Rabbit, the first batch of Rabbit R1 pre-orders will begin shipping on Sunday, March 31. With US deliveries taking a few weeks the company estimates that the initial R1 orders will be in customers’ hands ‘around April 24th’.
Debuting this year, the sherbet-toned orange Rabbit R1 has generated a lot of hype. Branded as an AI assistant, its arrival raises a lot of questions about the utility and impact of AI hardware in the age of smartphones. The Rabbit R1 is powered in large by San Francisco startup Perplexity’s LLM and the sleek and vibrant design by Teenage Engineering features a physical scroll wheel and a rotating camera, topped off with a cute animated bunny that serves as an avatar for the AI software.
The tech company started taking pre-orders of the Rabbit R1 for $199 in January – with the initial batches of 10,000 devices selling out rapidly. Batch one is set to release for shipping soon, however, buyers who purchased a later batch pre-order will have to wait a few months for theirs to arrive. Pre-orders for batch seven are currently live.
Rabbit is also hosting a pickup party in New York City at the end of April, open to all kinds of buyers and not just bulk orders. More information and details about the party and first deliveries will be released next week.
How does the Rabbit R1 work?
With such an appealing yet minimalist design, it raises the question of how this device works.
Well, the main way that users interact with the R1 is via pushing and holding the ‘Push to Talk’ button. This allows the Rabbit OS to start listening for input. An artfully designed rabbit head slowly rises and flows up and down as you speak your request. Booking a table for dinner? R1’s on it. Asking for a good Easter dinner recipe? No problem (Although no rabbit I hope). What track was sampled on Ice Cube’s hit ‘It Was A Good Day’? These are the types of questions that the Rabbit R1 can handle with ease, according to their controlled video demo.
Featured image: Rabbit: R1
