Rabbit’s R1 and Humane’s Ai are rivals for a market that might not (yet) exist | TechCrunch Minute

The battle of the generative AI gadgets Is on Hardware can be fun again and I'm Not the only one saying it that's a Direct quote from techcrunch's Hardware Editor Brian heater and what he means is The fact that for the past decade you've Seen experiments with wearables and Other devices but nothing has displaced Smartphones from the center of the Ecosystem now with the emergence of form Factors designed to connect us to Chatbots and other AI interfaces things Feel unpredictable again maybe our Screens are about to get a lot smaller Maybe May they're going to go away Entirely the latest news on this front Comes from rabbit which held a launch Event this week for its R1 device it's Basically a small orange Gadget that You're supposed to interact with mainly By talking rabbit and the R1 might Already sound familiar because they got A ton of Buzz at this year's CES the Company said they were hoping to sell 500 devices on launch day and instead Sold 50 times that in 24 hours and of Course all of this comes as generative AI hype is building maybe even peing Intel says this is going to be the year Of the aipc Samsung says the same thing About smartphones and apple says it has A big announcement on this front too but If we're going to make a head-to-head Comparison the company we have to talk

About is Humane which launched just AIP Pin a few weeks ago like the R1 the AI Pin is meant to be a new paradigm a new Way we interact with the digital world There's no screen at all instead you Control it with your voice and then Images are projected onto the surface of Your hand the R1 doesn't go that far There is a 2.88 in touchscreen but the Main main reason to use the screen is to Enter your Wi-Fi password otherwise it's Mostly Voice driven there's also a Built-in camera to give the R1 more Environmental context for example Brian Asked it to describe the books on his Bookshelf and it told him that Moby Dick Is a classic and it sometimes recognized Some of the other titles what about Price this is one of the most notable Differences between rabbits R1 and Humane AI pin the AI pin costs $699 plus a monthly fee of $24 while the R1 is a much more affordable $199 again these are first generation Products from startups so you shouldn't Expect them to have all the Kinks worked Out that said the aiin has already Gotten a ton of negative reviews and I Don't think that's just about early Bugginess there's also this bigger Question about why do we need a separate Device can't we just access these AI Interfaces on our smartphones P crunch Actually asked hume's co-founder and CEO

Bethany bonjour about this and she told A story about seeing a family in a Restaurant and every single family Member spent all their time on their Phones so there's an argument that this Could break us free from our screens Though having everyone talk out loud to Their AI assistant doesn't sound like a Great outcome for family togetherness Either and that gets it an even more Fundamental question are these AI chat Interfaces the main way we want to Interact with our computers it sounds Great it's what we've seen in science Fiction but is it really worth dealing With the misunderstandings the Inaccuracies the hallucinations not just In some tool but in the main way we get Information from the internet maybe AI Models will improve to the point where This isn't an issue in the future but The R1 and the AI pin are not distant Future products their products available For sale right now so if you're thinking About spending your money on them that's How you should judge them but despite What I just said both of these things Can be true I can be skeptical that Generative AI is the capital F future And I can be excited that Hardware seems To be wide open again I'll see you Monday