Rabbit r1 has not shipped yet and has already received a major upgrade
Startup and CES 2024 breakout star Rabbit has revealed that its r1 mobile device will use Perplexity AI’s LLM (large language models) to power its internal search engine.
The announcement was made on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) and is part of a new brand partnership. Bewilderment as a service functions similarly to ChatGPT: you ask a question, the AI answers, and the two of you can go back and forth in conversation. Exact details on how the integration will work are scarce. We don’t know if it will be a standalone app or a built-in feature. Presumably, users will have to press the button on the side when they want to ask Perplexity a question or give it a command.
We are excited to announce our partnership with Rabbit: together we are introducing real-time, accurate answers to Rabbit R1, seamlessly powered by our advanced PPLX online LLM API, free from any knowledge disruption. Plus, we’re for the first 100,000 Rabbit R1 purchases… pic.twitter.com/hJRehDlhtvJanuary 18, 2024
Baffling benefits
There are several benefits to housing Perplexity in the R1. The most important of these is that there is no knowledge limitation. You see, one of the problems with ChatGPT is that it is not up to date on current events. It only contains information up to a certain date, which is officially April 2023. However, there is some discrepancy with this date, as online reports claiming it is September 2023.
Perplexity doesn’t have this problem because it receives regular updates, and the Rabbit r1 won’t have this problem either. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas confirmed this On X, the device will provide “live up-to-date answers” thanks to the integration.
The other major advantage of Perplexity is the fact that it provides access to third-party LLMs such as GPT-4 and Claude 2.1. According to the company, the reason it provides this access is because certain AIs are better at certain things. For example, GPT-4 is accurate, but its responses can sound robotic. The Claude model offers more “natural sound responses”. Subscribers can jump between the AIs if they have a specific use case.
To try out the other AIs, you need a subscription Bewilderment Pro. But if you’re one of the first 100,000 buyers of the r1, Rabbit will give you a free year of Perplexity Pro, a service that normally costs $200 per year. The subscription also introduces additional features, such as the ability to upload files to the AI.
Pre-orders are still available
The Rabbit r1 has essentially become the wunderkind of CES 2024. There has been a lot of hype surrounding the gadget as people rush to pre-order it.
At the time of writing this article, 50,000 copies have been sold across five separate batches. The sixth batch, which is now available, consists of another 50,000 units. So if you want that free year of Perplexity Pro, this is your chance. It is on a first come, first served basis.
Each r1 earns $200. Devices purchased from the sixth batch will begin shipping in the US in June 2024. People living in the EU and UK will have to wait longer to receive theirs. An exact date was not given.
We reached out to Rabbit to ask how many of Perplexity’s services will be on the r1. Something we didn’t mention earlier is that the AI has an assistant feature called Perplexity Copilot and can even generate images. In our opinion, we doubt the r1 will have image generation considering it only has a three-inch screen. Images don’t look great on a small screen. This story will be updated at a later date.
Until then, check out Ny Breaking’s list of the best AI content generators for 2024.