Two new gadgets launched in the United States this spring in quick succession have made the same promise: Generative artificial intelligence (AI) will wean you off your phone. While one is already a commercial failure, the other is either a glimpse of a post-iPhone world or… a scam.
It’s that the R1, of the start-up Californian company Rabbit, was launched very clumsily by a young entrepreneur who allegedly took advantage a little unfairly of the very speculative cryptocurrency market, letting down customers disappointed by the lack of return on the digital asset he sold them.
The fear being voiced these days by the American specialist media is that the R1 is also a scam. It is essentially an Android phone application packaged in a small orange thing 8 cm on each side, then sold for $275, an unnecessarily high price given the result.
The R1, however, is not stupid. It resembles the gadget of another Californian start-up, Humane: the AI Pin, a pin that you talk to to accomplish most of the tasks that a smartphone normally does.
Incomplete, the AI Pin was however put on the market too quickly, at too high a price and, failing to attract buyers, the company put itself up for sale just a few days after its launch.
Too poorly put together, the R1 raises fears of an equally premature end. However, it deserves a better fate.
To the tune of Star Trek
This gadget has two flaws. Its spec sheet is very modest. Its touchscreen is 2.9 inches and its MediaTek processor is already outdated. That hasn’t stopped hackers from hacking the device and installing a full Android system on it, rather than the generative AI application called Rabbit OS that powers it de facto.
Rabbit OS is the R1’s other flaw: the monochrome interface does too little. It provides access in English only to voice control, a camera, and a few settings. Voice control lets you control a music stream on Spotify or Apple Music, hail an Uber, order a meal on DoorDash, or generate an image via Midjourney.
The camera allows you to take photos of objects or places about which you can then question the AI on board the R1. The settings allow you to connect to a WiFi network or Bluetooth headphones.
In principle, the R1 recalls the communicator used by the crew of theEnterprise In Star Trek : we press the button, we bring it to his mouth and we speak to him. Obviously, it’s an AI that responds to us, rather than Spock or Scotty…
But the requests you can make of it are extremely limited. For questions of general interest, the R1 uses Wolfram Alpha’s search engine. Everything else falls into the void. No messaging, by text, email or voice. And its few functions drain its battery, which only lasts 4 hours. That’s too little.
Unsurprisingly, no one recommends buying this thing. Especially since there is no guarantee that Rabbit will continuously update its software.
Phone, idiot
The hacked version of the R1, which installs the Android system and Google services, including the Gemini assistant, falls into another category. It joins a growing movement: the return of old cell phone handsets.
In the last quarter, sales of what the Anglosphere calls ” dumb phones “, literally “dumb phones,” jumped 25% compared to the previous three months. The trend has been going on for at least a year.
Consumers trying to reduce their screen addiction are increasingly opting for a phone that has no screen, a screen, or a very small one. This avoids falling into the trap of overly addictive social networks.
In its hacked version, the R1 presents itself as one of those dumb phones to which a few multimedia applications have been added, as well as a voice assistant actually capable of accomplishing certain concrete tasks, such as writing an email, or searching online.
Of course, the downside is that you can’t buy this gadget as is. You have to tinker with an R1, and that’s not that easy. Another problem: if one day a manufacturer has the good idea to replicate this model, there’s no guarantee that it will in turn fulfill the promise of replacing modern large-screen phones.
In fact, even a finished, fully functional product powered by generative AI will still run the risk of producing “hallucinations,” or generating responses that appear true but are in reality completely false.
In other words, we may have discovered the replacement for that screen that we hold in our pocket and that we always look at too often. Or, we discovered the scam of the decade: poorly constructed gadgets sold at high prices and which fulfill none of their promises.