If you've been on the internet at all this week, you've seen plenty of reviews for the new one Human AI pin And Rabbit R1 which are, quite frankly, cruel. Riding the AI hype train hasn't been enough to cover up the incredibly limited, 'in development' nature of their software or downright broken functionality. The consensus is clear: don't buy one.
These products may have even deflated the bulging AI bubble a little. A lot of the best smartphone Manufacturers, who are also rushing to cram AI into every conceivable facet to turn around their fortunes, should also consider Humane and Rabbit as a cautionary tale. Just like mobile consumers.
Would you buy the Rabbit R1?
1260 votes
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
Even if they work correctly, part of the problem is that there isn't a hugely compelling reason to use these standalone AI products. As we put it into practice; It's hard to answer why the Rabbit R1 isn't just an app (it turns out you can run it on your phone). Yes, voice commands that free you from a screen are cool. Likewise, AI chat, text summarization, translations, annotations/transcriptions, and even real-time object detection can all be useful, but they're not sufficiently groundbreaking to warrant an entirely new product category.
You'll find many of the same features touted in new AI suites for smartphones, like those from Samsung Galaxy AI. However, I have hardly used it Circle to search or transcriptions from voice recorders since their introduction. Despite what companies may think, AI in itself is not a selling point and consumers will quickly forget or grow tired of features that aren't really useful. Numerous polls we've conducted also show that most of you aren't that concerned about generative AI features. Simply put, brands can't rely on AI buzz, or lack thereof, to move units.
Humane and Rabbit are known for poor functionality, but smartphone AI isn't much more advanced.
Even worse, these AI-focused devices offer very few third-party app integrations, which in theory could make them really useful tools. Spotify, Uber and DoorDash, if their web-hacked integrations even work, are your lot on the Rabbit R1, while Humane has Tidal for music and that's it. What a joke, even for early stage products.
However, mobile is no different. Galaxy AI's web page summary only works in the Samsung browser, yet most of us are probably using Chrome or Firefox. What if I want Google to summarize emails from a self-hosted provider or play media from local storage instead of a popular cloud service? This is the big problem that AI, and even last-generation assistants, have yet to solve. Google, Apple, Microsoft or whoever needs to figure out how to combine AI with the massive app ecosystem that consumers currently enjoy. Even harder will be convincing developers to cross platforms, which proved incredibly difficult in the heyday of virtual assistants. Either way, reinventing the wheel with proprietary features won't lead to an AI platform that consumers want to invest in in the long term.
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
This point leads us to the heart of the problem with the Rabbit R1, Humane AI Pin, and other AI products on the market. They all rely on cloud processing to run the large language models (LLMs) that are part of their core functionality. In fact, both seem to rely on it ChatGPT-4 from OpenAI model in at least some form, probably because it is currently considered the cutting edge LLM with a solid API behind it. These devices may be little more than a wrapper for third-party APIs, much like many of the AI applications you see scattered across the Play Store and even in the enterprise space. If ChatGPT goes down or your network experiences performance issues, your Rabbit R1 becomes a paperweight. But it is also a problem because any integrations are only superficial.
Building products that rely entirely on third-party services has always been pretty stupid, as services can change features and costs or be discontinued altogether. How many times have we complained about shutdowns within Google's own ecosystem? However, the AI arms race has led many companies to abandon this piece of common sense. Looking at smartphones, this underlines how important the work on Google is Twin Nano and Android NN APIs actually are too. Nano runs small models locally on the device, without the cloud, making the functionality secure and working even if your phone is temporarily offline.
Cloud AI is good for building products quickly, but its limitations are obvious.
On-device AI requires advanced hardware and software that isn't cheap to invest in or build (there's a reason the R1 only costs $199) and still doesn't automatically solve the application and usage problem. But if there's an AI strategy that's going to win, it's almost certainly one that takes the time to master all these boring but necessary basics first.
So let the Rabbit R1 and Humane AI Pin be a warning to those on board the hype train and to smartphone brands (and consumers) with AI tunnel vision. It's going to take a lot more than just flashy-sounding AI features to make a truly compelling product, and we're probably still a few years away from solving these early problems.