this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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I mean these kinds of "AI companions" are grifts anyway. They won't take off because they are a solution looking for a problem. They aren't as affordable as the entry level HomePod/Amazon Pod/Google Home units, so they can't be bought as a "why not, and it's a speaker anyway" type thing. They don't have any secondary functionality you don't already have in your phone.
And if that's not enough, you can bet your cute arse on that Apple and Google are both working on bringing LLM functions into their assistants, basically making these units obsolete.
The moment that these companies decide that they can't afford to pay for servers and API subscriptions anymore, the service will die and you'll end up with a colourful brick. Don't buy these things, they're unfinished and will die within a year or two.
In addition to being able to run the exact same thing on that phone you already have, too.
Their device does not have any specific hardware for their usage. Even if Google and Apple don't bring any improvement to their own solution, soon enough someone is bound to just provide an "assistant AI app" with a subscription, proxying openai requests and using the touchscreen, camera, micro and speaker that are already there instead of making you buy a new set of those.
The "AI" in the R1 is utter shit. Wired eviscerated it in a review.
https://www.wired.com/review/rabbit-r1/
It is somewhat OK considering it's a free app.
You could say the same about Siri, which is also utter shit.
And yet, for both you are supposed to pay for an overpriced device. You can at least pirate the R1 app.