With CES 2024 now very much underway and starting to come to its conclusion it’s no surprise that AI has been a big focus for a lot of the people and companies in attendance. We’ve seen AI added to all kinds of things, some better than others, but one interesting story has been the Rabbit R1.
The R1 is a little AI box that is designed to provide AI capabilities away from your phone in a way that opens the door to new possibilities and use cases. As part of its launch Rabbit said that it would be happy if it sold just 500 units. but the company has already announced that it smashed that goal considerably. In fact, it sold its full 10,000 initial availability in just 24 hours.
The R1 comes with a small 2.88-inch display that also acts as a touchscreen and the main way that users will interface with the device itself. You can do a variety of things including send messages without having to use your phone, buy things, and play music.
There are still tons of questions about the real usefulness of something like this when we already have phones in our pockets of course, but it’s clear that at least 10,000 people are interested. The device sells for $199 which isn’t cheap, but the prospect of a device that could do almost anything in the future is a strong value proposition. There’s a camera on the device as well, and that could well turn out to be a very interesting addition in the months and years to come.