Only 5,000 people use the Rabbit R1 every day

Only 5,000 people use the Rabbit R1 every day

Spend a penny for the Rabbit R1. Of the 100,000 people who bought the orange AI gadget, only 5,000 are still using it every day five months after its launch. That's straight from the mouth of Rabbit founder Jesse Liu, who told Fast Company that the number was set to outpace big tech companies even before the device launched.

That's a huge drop from the AI ​​gadget's timeline earlier this year. There was a lot of buzz around the R1 after its debut at CES and an air of mystery even before Hueman's AI pin was revealed. Both devices shipped without any of the futuristic grandeur that was promised. As The Verge's David Pierce wrote in his review of the R1, "The whole thing feels broken." Maybe that's why almost no one is using the R1 or why Heumann was selling more AI pins than it was back last month.

We've written extensively about whether there's any ideal form of standalone AI gadget or whether their future lies solely in phones. The AI ​​features we're seeing on smartphones are already so good that even when an AI gadget does exactly what its maker says, it seems a waste. Still, Meta's Ray-Ban glasses make a good case for at least one kind of standalone, AI-forward device. And who knows, maybe Jony Ive's OpenAI device will do the same.

Rabbit's do-everything-for-you "big action model" update, which will apparently let it do things like log into websites and order plane tickets or dinner for you when you say so, is apparently coming on October 1. Will it inspire people to dust off their Rabbit R1 and put another AI-only thing in their pockets? Given that both Apple and Google are promising local AI that knows what's on your screen and can do things for you across multiple apps... well, that doesn't seem likely.