Rabbit R1 buyer's show overturned: Ask a question is more ink than Siri, and the response speed is far less than the release

Jin Lei's West Wind comes from the Au Fei Temple

量子位 | 公众号 QbitAI

Rabbit R1, which claims to overturn all apps, has sold 50,000 units in just 5 days!

What is the concept?

At $199 a unit, the Rabbit R1 has already made a lot of money — $10 million.

And the reason why it is so popular is nothing more than its retro design and simple operation.

For example, in CEO Jesse Lyu's actual test operation, he only needs to say "Play Feel Good Inc" to it, and the song will be played:

For example, if you hold it and ask the Discord forum on the screen, "What are you discussing", Rabbit R1 can summarize what you "saw":

But at the same time, the netizens who have now got the real machine have posted a completely different side from what Lu Cheng showed.

This netizen asked Rabbit R1 to "see" at the menu and asked a question:

What's the best way to eat them?

Rabbit R1 first said "let me see" after receiving the question, and then ......

For nearly 20 seconds, the netizens stopped and waited with the machine (manual dog head......

This netizen even said:

Imagine you're in a noisy environment where it doesn't fully understand you the first time (or you just said it wrong) and the process of correcting your mistakes takes 1 minute.

As soon as the real test video came out, the Rabbit R1, which was originally in popularity, instantly attracted more discussions and controversies among netizens.

One of the points of controversy is the slow response time of the machine, which some people attribute to the processing speed of the LLM itself, while others believe that this is a common problem of all AI terminals.

But this has led to a bigger problem behind the explosion of Rabbit R1 -

Why is such AI hardware so popular, and is it suitable for the present and the future?

So much so that someone directly posted such a video, thinking that Rabbit R1 is enough to make an APP:

In the face of these many problems, we found that Lu Cheng gave his own explanation in an in-depth interview.

Why not an APP?

Lu Cheng believes that Rabbit can indeed be a software product, but from his point of view, there is another company behind him.

If Rabbit is just an app, it means that Apple has access to its code, which is tantamount to sharing the company's intellectual property.

Secondly, they had to develop and maintain the app for both iOS and Android, which required a significant amount of ongoing capital investment.

The most important thing is that, like other apps, Rabbit will be placed on the same platform, which brings a sense of unease to Lu Cheng:

What if a better app emerges tomorrow? User loyalty is almost zero!

The reason why there are many concerns is also related to the new operating system carried by Rabbit R1 - Rabbit OS.

The underlying AI technology used in Rabbit OS is not a large language model technology similar to ChatGPT, but is based on a "Large Action Model (LAM)".

Although the functions that can be achieved by large action models and large language models seem to be similar from the actual demonstration, Rabbit OS equipped with this technology can understand people's complex intentions and autonomously operate apps to complete tasks after hearing instructions from human natural language.

Lu Cheng likened the importance of this technology to multi-touch technology, so much so that they wanted to build specialized hardware devices to run it as a way to protect the technology and also to reduce risk.

In addition, Lv added that the key processing of Rabbit R1 is in the cloud, and user data is more secure than on most low-batch hardware. And there is also the benefit of reducing hardware costs, so that each device can save some profits to pay for AI processing, such as Rabbit to buy and pay for ChatGPT services for users.

After some explanation, Lv Cheng introduced the truly scalable business behind the Rabbit R1:

People teach Rabbit to do their own thing, essentially creating Rabbit, not using an app, and when users sell their own Rabbit, Rabbit OS will take a cut of it.

But for users, it still doesn't seem to be a good indication of what exactly the Rabbit R1 means now and in the future.

In other words, it is also another core question that netizens are concerned about, "whether it will be a flash in the pan".

Let's stretch the timeline a little longer, and we might as well start with the products that Lu Cheng has created in the past.

It has also "released" cool AI hardware

Cheng Lv, a Chinese serial entrepreneur in the field of AI, graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and founded Raven Tech.

In 2017, Baidu wholly acquired Raven, and Lu Cheng served as the general manager of Baidu's smart home hardware, and in the same year, he led the team to release Baidu's first smart speaker, Raven H.

Later, it was revealed at CES in 2018, so that the Wall Street Journal directly sealed this speaker as the best product of the year.

However, even if it is a momentary success, the consumer market does not buy it.

After a year at Baidu, Lu Cheng chose to leave Baidu and founded Cyber Manufacture Co., an AI-centric company in the United States, the predecessor of today's Rabbit.

Lu Cheng has a hobby of collecting vintage synths, which led him to connect with Jesper Kouthoofd, founder of Swedish audio hardware company Teenage Engineering.

Teenage Engineering specializes in the design and manufacture of electronic devices and related products, including Playdate, a small handheld game console, which it launched in collaboration with software development company Panic.

However, judging from the results of the current sales volume, it is also relatively average.

Later, it came to the Rabbit R1, and Lu Cheng also chose to cooperate with Teenage Engineering to design it.

As for the initial idea of this product, Lu Cheng said:

Although mobile phones are a "necessity" in life, since subscribing to the annual upgrade service of iPhone, I feel more and more that the emotional connection between me and the iPhone is constantly erased.

In other words, he is gradually losing interest in mobile phones.

After some discussions with the Teenage Engineering team, the two sides hit it off, and the idea and design of the Rabbit R1 gradually became clear - to create a gadget that combines AI and retro.

Lu Cheng also compared the device to Pokédex, a fictional electronic device in Pokémon, and Rabbit is equivalent to a Pokémon pet.

(Pokédex is an electronic bestiary that records information about the various Pokémon that players encounter and catch)

Now it is obvious that many netizens have gotten this:

However, we can also see some similarities from the explosive AI hardware created by Lu Cheng.

For example, the Rabbit R1, like the Raven H, was unveiled at CES and became popular.

As for how long the popularity and sales of the Rabbit R1 can last this time, we need to leave it to time to answer.