The launch of the Rabbit R1 at CES left many questions unanswered, but earlier today, the brand finally shed light on the LLM (Large Language Model) that will power the device's interaction with us mere mortals. The AI provider in question is none other than Perplexity, a San Francisco-based startup that aspires to overtake Google in the AI space and, unsurprisingly, has already received investment from the likes of NVIDIA and Jeff Bezos.
Perplexity will provide up-to-the-minute search results via its $199 orange Rabbit theme – no subscription required. However, the first 100,000 R1 buyers will receive a one-year Perplexity Pro subscription — which normally costs $200 — for free. This advanced service adds support for file uploads, a daily quota of over 300 complex queries and the ability to switch to other AI models (GPT-4, Claude 2.1 or Gemini), although this does not necessarily apply to the R1 use case.
In case you're wondering:
Today we announced that we will be using Perplexity as one of our main LLM services for r1 – and r1 still requires no signup to take advantage of this partnership.
The $200 Perplexity Pro Credit is a standalone bonus offered by… https://t.co/qYMM7TKFyZ
– Rabbit Company. (@rabbit_hmi) January 19, 2024
Designed by Teenage Engineering, the Rabbit R1 features a 2.88-inch touchscreen, a scroll wheel, two microphones, a speaker, a rotating camera, and a push-to-talk button. Leveraging the Large Action Model (LAM), this custom tool can perform tasks like booking trips, finding recipes based on the ingredients you have on hand, identifying people and things (including items in your fridge for example), or just… Fact checking – which we now know we will be relying on Perplexity's real-time search engine. The R1 is available for pre-order now before shipping in March or April.
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