In the week since its unveiling at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the Rabbit R1 has created a frenzy in the tech space.

With many branding the Tamagochi-looking gadget as 'the next big thing', 'the AI future we were promised', and 'the smartphone challenger'.

Born of a collaboration between US start-up Rabbit and tech innovator Teenage Engineering, the R1 is a “pocket companion” that aims to break away from the app-based operating system.

With no apps and only a 2.88-inch touchscreen, a touch-to-talk button, and a rotating camera for computer vision, the palm-sized, bright orange device acts as an AI voice assistant similar to Alexa – playing songs, making bookings, and retrieving information for its user through a single channel instead of via multiple apps.

It can even edit images on Photoshop.

“I think Rabbit r1 gives us a glimpse of a new type of man-machine interaction where the agent gets things done for us by learning to use human interfaces and tools instead of APIs designed for machines,” said Ross Veitch, CEO and co-founder of Wego.

“What I find interesting is that they’ve developed a new type of foundation model, which they call a “Large Action Model” which has been pre-trained on human interactions with apps and websites. They claim their LAM is significantly more efficient at figuring out UI’s than LLM based models,” he added.

Indeed, at the heart of the R1 lies Rabbit’s custom AI operating system. Unlike chatbots that generate text responses, Rabbit’s LAM generates actions on behalf of users, such as online grocery shopping or booking transportation, without the need for custom integrations.

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