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Rabbit R1 review: A $199 AI toy that fails at almost everything

The Rabbit R1 is a cute AI gadget, but at launch it’s riddled with issues and terrible battery life. When phones can handle similar AI tasks, the R1 doesn’t do enough to justify its existence.

Once it’s turned on, you should be able to hit the push to talk button on its side and ask the AI assistant whatever you want: the weather, local traffic or a summary of a recent book. I asked it to find some lunch nearby and it spent an entire minute communing with Postmates and its AI cloud — the precise amount of time it would take me to complete a GrubHub order on my phone. Even if Rabbit somehow manages to deliver on some of the promises of its LAM – like the ability to train the R1 to handle the variety of tasks – I have no faith that it’ll actually work well.

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