Rabbit r1 hasn't shipped yet and it's already received a major upgrade

Startup company and breakout star of CES 2024 Rabbit has revealed its r1 mobile device will utilize 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. Perplexity as a service functions similarly to ChatGPT – you ask it a question, the AI answers and the two of you can go back and forth in a conversational manner. Exact details on how the integration will work are sparse. We don't know if it'll be a standalone app or a built-in feature. Presumably, users will need to push the button on the side whenever they want to ask Perplexity a question or issue a command. 

Perplexity benefits

There are several benefits to having Perplexity housed in the r1. Chief among them is it does not have any knowledge cutoff. You see, one of the problems with ChatGPT is it’s not up to date on current events. It only carries information up to a certain date which, officially, is April 2023. However, there is some discrepancy with this date as online reports claim it’s September 2023. 

Perplexity doesn’t have this issue as it receives frequent updates and the Rabbit r1 won’t have this problem, either. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas confirmed on X the device will provide “live up-to-date answers” thanks to the integration.

The other big benefit to Perplexity is the fact it offers 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. GPT-4, for example, is accurate, but its responses may sound robotic. The Claude model offers more “natural sound responses”. Subscribers can hop between the AIs if they have a specific use case.

To try out the other AIs, you will need a subscription to Perplexity Pro. But, if you are 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 annually. The subscription also introduces extra features like the ability to upload files to the AI. 

Pre-orders still available

The Rabbit r1 has effectively become the wonder child of CES 2024. There’s been a lot of hype surrounding the gadget as people rush to pre-order it.

At the time of this writing, 50,000 units have been sold across five individual batches. The sixth batch, which is available right now, consists of an additional 50,000 units. So if you want that free year of Perplexity Pro, now’s your chance. It’s on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Each r1 will run you $200. Devices bought from the sixth batch will begin shipping out in June 2024 in the US. People living in the EU and UK will need to wait longer to receive theirs. An exact date was not given.

We reached out to Rabbit asking just how much of Perplexity’s services will be present on the r1. Something that 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 since it only has a three-inch screen. Images won't look great on a tiny display. This story will be updated at a later time. 

Until then, check out TechRadar's list of the best AI content generators for 2024.

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