There were times I wasn’t sure the Rabbit R1 was even a real thing. The AI-powered, Teenage Engineering-designed device came out of nowhere to become one of the biggest stories at CES, promising a level of fun and whimsy that felt much better than some of the more self-serious AI companies out there. CEO Jesse Lyu practically promised the world in this $199 device.
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A morning with the Rabbit R1: a fun, funky, unfinished AI gadget
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25415491/DSC08587.JPG?ssl=1 "A morning with the Rabbit R1: a fun, funky, unfinished AI gadget")
Well, say this for Rabbit: it’s real. Last night, I went to the swanky TWA Hotel in New York City, along with a few hundred reporters, creators, and particularly enthusiastic R1 buyers. After a couple of hours of photo booths, specialty cocktails, and a rousing keynote and demo from Lyu — in which he made near-constant reference to and fun of the Humane AI Pin — we all got our R1s to take home. I’ve been using mine ever since, and I have some thoughts. And some questions.
From a hardware perspective, the R1 screams “kinda meh Android phone.” Here are the salient specs: it’s about three inches tall and wide and a half-inch thick. It weighs 115 grams, which is about two-thirds as much as the iPhone 15. It has a 2.88-inch screen, runs on a 2.3GHz MediaTek MT6765 processor, and has 128 gigs of storage and four gigs of RAM. It has a speaker on the back, two mics on the top, and a SIM card slot on the side right next to the USB-C charging port. It only comes in one color, a hue Rabbit calls “leuchtorange” but is often known as “brilliant orange” or “luminous orange.” It’s definitely orange, and it’s definitely luminous.
At this point, the best way I can describe the R1 is like a Picasso painting of a smartphone: it has most of the same parts, just laid out really differently. Instead of sitting on top or in the back, the R1’s camera sits in a cutout space on the right side of the device, where it can spin its lens to face both toward and away from you.
The R1 is like a Picasso painting of a smartphone
After spending a few hours playing with the device, I have to say: it’s pretty nice. Not luxurious, or even particularly high-end, just silly and fun. Where Humane’s AI Pin feels like a carefully sculpted metal gem, the R1 feels like an old-school MP3 player crossed with a fidget spinner. The wheel spins a little stiffly for my taste but smoothly enough, the screen is a little fuzzy but fine, and the main action button feels satisfying to thump on.
When I first got the device and connected it to Wi-Fi, it then immediately asked me to sign up for an account at Rabbithole, the R1’s web portal. I did that, scanned a QR code with the R1 to get it synced up, and immediately did a software update. I spent that time logging in to the only four external services the R1 currently connects to: Spotify, Uber, DoorDash, and Midjourney.
Once I was eventually up and running, I started chatting with the R1. So far, it does a solid job with basic AI questions: it gave me lots of good information about this week’s NFL draft, found a few restaurants near me, and knew when Herbert Hoover was president. This is all fairly basic ChatGPT stuff, and there’s some definite lag as it fetches answers, but I much prefer the interface to the Humane AI Pin — because there’s a screen, and you can see the thing working so the AI delays don’t feel quite so interminable.
Because there’s a screen, the AI delays don’t feel quite so interminable
Almost immediately, though, I started running into stuff the R1 just can’t do. It can’t send emails or make spreadsheets, though Lyu has been demoing both for months. Rabbithole is woefully unfinished, too, to the point I was trying to tap around on my phone and it was instead moving a cursor around a half-second after every tap. That’s a good reminder that the whole thing is running on a virtual machine storing all your apps and credentials, which still gives me security-related pause.
Oh, and here’s my favorite thing that has happened on the R1 so far: I got it connected to my Spotify account, which is a feature I’m particularly excited about. I asked for “Beyoncé’s new album,” and the device excitedly went and found me “Crazy in Love” — a lullaby version, from an artist called “Rockabye Baby!” So close and yet so far. It doesn’t seem to be able to find my playlists, either, or skip tracks. When I said, “Play The 1975,” though, that worked fine and quickly. (The speaker, by the way, is very much crappy Android phone quality. You’re going to want to use that Bluetooth connection.)
The R1’s Vision feature, which uses the camera to identify things in the scene around you, seems to work fine as long as all you want is a list of objects in the scene. The device can’t take a photo or video and doesn’t seem to be able to do much else with what it can see.
When you’re not doing anything, the screen shows the time and that bouncing rabbit-head logo. When you press and hold the side button to issue a command, the time and battery fade away, and the rabbit’s ears perk up like it’s listening. It’s very charming! The overall interface is simple and text-based, but it’s odd in spots: it’s not always obvious how to go back, for instance, and you only get to see a line or two of text at a time at the very bottom of the screen, even when there’s a whole paragraph of answer to read.
Rabbit’s roadmap is ambitious: Lyu has spent the last few months talking about all the things the R1’s so-called “Large Action Model” can do, including learning apps and using them for you. During last night’s event, he talked about opening up the USB-C port on the device to allow accessories, keyboards, and more. That’s all coming… eventually. Supposedly. For now, the R1’s feature set is much more straightforward. You can use the device to play music, get answers to questions, translate speech, take notes, summon an Uber, and a few other things.
That means there’s still an awful lot the R1 can’t do and a lot I have left to test. (Anything you want to know about, by the way, let me know!) I’m particularly curious about its battery life, its ability to work with a bad connection, whether it heats up over time, and how it handles more complex tasks than just looking up information and ordering chicken nuggets. But so far, this thing seems like it’s trying to be less like a smartphone killer and more like the beginnings of a useful companion. That’s probably as ambitious as it makes sense to be right now — though Lyu and the Rabbit folks have a lot of big promises to eventually live up to and not a lot of time to do so.
Photography by David Pierce / The Verge
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Would you pay $20 a month for access to AI hardware you already own? That appears to be one of Meta’s next bets. This week, it quietly announced that your glasses’ Conversation Focus feature will soon be limited to three hours of use per month, unless you pay for a $19.99 Meta One Premium subscription.
In a help article, the company insists that it won’t require a subscription to use your glasses, period; it’s merely erecting a “rate limit” for certain AI features. Even premium subscribers will only get 15 hours of Conversation Focus per month under that “rate limit,” it claims.
Problem is, Meta’s rate limit is ridiculous. The Conversation Focus feature, which amplifies the voice of the person you’re speaking to so you can hear better in noisy environments, is not something that should plausibly be rate-limited, because it doesn’t use Meta’s servers. It runs on-device, using the chips inside the glasses that you’ve already purchased. I turned off my internet, and it kept working.
Here’s how the company introduced it last year: “[C]onversation focus uses your AI glasses’ open-ear speakers, beamforming technology, and real-time spatial processing to dynamically amplify the voice of the person you’re talking to.”
Not only does it avoid Meta’s servers, but Conversation Focus doesn’t technically require an internet connection at all. I double-checked by turning off my phone’s Wi-Fi and cellular, turning on Airplane Mode, and I was still able to use Conversation Focus just fine by tapping a button on my phone.
Does Meta have some secret licensing deal with another company that costs it money every time a person uses Conversation Focus? Failing that, the rate limit sounds utterly bogus.
We’ve asked if Meta can explain the move, and whether the company plans to put other on-device features behind a subscription. Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
TRANSFORMATION: AI changes what robots can accomplish
Humanoid robots, showcased at Chicago’s Automate Show, demonstrate advancements in AI and robotics. Jeff Burnstein, President of the Association for Advancing Automation, explains AI’s role in enabling diverse tasks in hospitals, factories, and warehouses. He emphasizes that robotics boosts competitiveness, leading to job creation.
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A busy warehouse loading dock can be a grind. Trucks pull up. Packages pour in. Workers have to move fast, lift heavy boxes and keep everything flowing before the next trailer arrives. That part of the warehouse has always been one of the hardest places to automate. Every box can be a different size. Freight can shift in transit. Labels may face the wrong way. And when one system finishes a task, the next system still has to know what to do with the package.
Now, Ambi Robotics and Pickle Robot Company say they have linked their robotic systems to help solve that handoff problem. The companies announced a commercial integration that connects Pickle Robot’s trailer-unloading robots with Ambi Robotics’ AmbiStack pallet-building system. In other words, one robot system unloads mixed freight from a trailer. Then a conveyor moves those cases downstream so another robotic system can scan and stack them for warehouse receiving.
If this works well in large facilities, it points to a future where robots can handle more of the work that happens between a truck and a warehouse floor.
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Ambi Robotics and Pickle Robot Company have integrated their warehouse robotics systems to automate the flow of freight from trailers to pallets. The companies say the setup can fit into existing warehouse operations. (Ambi Robotics and Pickle Robot Company )
How warehouse robots move packages from truck to pallet
The setup starts at the trailer. Pickle Robot’s system unloads boxes from trailers or containers. That matters because unloading mixed freight can be exhausting work. It also creates bottlenecks when warehouses do not have enough people on the dock. From there, the packages move by conveyor into AmbiStack. Ambi Robotics designed AmbiStack as a multipurpose stacking system. It reads package information and builds pallets for the next stage of the warehouse process.
The key here is the handoff. Many warehouses already use automation. However, those systems often work in separate lanes. One machine may handle unloading. Another may handle sorting or stacking. Yet the warehouse still needs people or custom engineering to connect the pieces. This collaboration tries to make that connection smoother. The companies say the system can work with existing warehouse infrastructure. That means operators may avoid tearing apart a facility to use it.
Why Physical AI is important for warehouse automation
Physical AI means AI that controls machines doing physical work. That is important here because warehouse robots have to deal with moving boxes, shifting freight, conveyor timing and pallet stability. That creates a very different challenge from software that writes a paragraph or answers a question. A warehouse robot has to react to what sits in front of it. A box can arrive dented. A label can face the wrong way. A pallet can become unstable if the next case goes in the wrong spot.
This Ambi Robotics and Pickle Robot integration shows how that can work inside a warehouse. Pickle Robot handles the trailer unloading. AmbiStack takes over downstream by scanning and stacking cases for receiving. Together, the systems show how specialized robots can connect across a warehouse workflow.
“Warehouse operators shouldn’t have to choose between best-in-class technologies and seamless integration,” said Jim Liefer, CEO of Ambi Robotics. “As Physical AI transforms supply chains, interoperability will become increasingly important.”
AJ Meyer, founder and CEO of Pickle Robot Company, put the customer demand more directly: “Customers want automation that improves real-world throughput while fitting into existing operations.”
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A new warehouse automation system connects robotic trailer unloading with AI-powered pallet building, reducing manual handoffs on busy loading docks. (Ambi Robotics and Pickle Robot Company )
Why loading docks can slow warehouse operations
Anyone who has waited on a delayed package knows the supply chain can break down fast. Sometimes the problem starts long before a delivery truck reaches your home. Inbound logistics covers the work that happens when goods arrive at a warehouse. That includes getting boxes off trailers and moving them into the right workflow. It sounds pretty straightforward until you see the reality.
Trailers can be packed unevenly. Boxes can arrive in odd shapes. Warehouse teams also deal with tight schedules and physical strain. That is why loading docks have become such a major focus for automation. If robots can unload freight and pass it into a pallet-building system without constant human intervention, warehouses could move goods faster through one of the most labor-heavy parts of the operation.
How warehouse robots could change jobs
The big question is obvious. What happens to workers? Robots can take over repetitive and physically demanding tasks. That may reduce injuries and help warehouses handle labor shortages. It may also change which jobs companies need most.
Instead of spending a full shift unloading trailers, some workers may monitor the unloading and stacking systems. Others may step in when a package jams, a label fails to scan or a pallet needs human attention.
Still, that shift can feel unsettling. Automation often comes with a promise of safety and efficiency. Workers want to know where they fit in next. That is very important. A robot may move a box, but people still handle judgment calls, customer issues and fast decisions when the workflow changes.
Why retailers want connected warehouse robots now
Retailers and logistics companies feel pressure from several directions. Consumers expect faster shipping. Warehouses face staffing challenges. Meanwhile, e-commerce keeps creating more package volume. That creates a hard math problem. Companies need to move more goods without slowing down at the dock.
This Ambi Robotics and Pickle Robot setup gives warehouse operators another option. Instead of buying one giant system from a single vendor, they can connect specialized robotic tools that handle different parts of the job. That could give operators more flexibility. It could also help them avoid major redesigns, which can be expensive and disruptive. In other words, the robots are getting smarter. They are also starting to work together in more useful ways.
What this means to you
Even if you never set foot in a warehouse, this kind of automation can affect your life. When warehouses move goods more efficiently, stores may restock faster. Online orders may move with fewer delays. Returns may get processed more quickly. There is another side, too. More automation can reshape job roles inside warehouses. That means workers may need new training as companies bring in more robotic systems.
You may also hear fewer excuses when packages run late. If robots help warehouses operate with fewer bottlenecks, retailers may raise expectations for speed even more. That sounds convenient, but it also means the race for faster delivery keeps putting pressure on every part of the supply chain.
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Ambi Robotics and Pickle Robot Company say their integrated systems could help warehouses move inbound freight faster while easing physically demanding work. (Ambi Robotics and Pickle Robot Company )
Kurt’s key takeaways
What grabs me here is the handoff. One robot unloads packages from a trailer. Another scans and stacks them for the next part of the warehouse process. That is the piece that could change how loading docks operate. Warehouses are full of little delays that add up fast. If a package sits in the wrong place or waits for a person to move it to the next step, the whole process can slow down. This integration shows how warehouse robots may start taking over more of that middle work between the truck and the warehouse floor. Still, the human side deserves attention. These systems could reduce backbreaking work, which is a good thing. At the same time, they may change what warehouse workers are asked to do. The companies that make that transition clear, fair and useful for workers will be the ones to watch.
If robots can unload the truck, build the pallet and keep the warehouse moving, what job inside the warehouse gets automated next? Let us know by writing to us at CyberGuy.com.
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Google’s NotebookLM is adding a new way to catch up on your notes: TikTok-style AI videos. The new feature is rolling out to Google AI Ultra and Pro subscribers, allowing NotebookLM to generate 60-second vertical AI clips based on the sources you upload to the app.
The example shared by Google details Australia’s unsuccessful war on emus, pairing paper cutout-style AI art of emus with narration. It adds to some of the other ways NotebookLM lets you interact with your research, including by generating AI podcasts, cinematic videos, and visual explainers.
To generate a 60-second clip, head to NotebookLM on the web or app, select a notebook, and then choose “Video” from the Studio column on the right side of the screen. From there, select “Short,” choose the topic you’d like NotebookLM to focus on (or enter your own), and then hit the “Generate” button.
The feature is rolling out in English only for now, with support for free users coming “soon.”
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