Photo: Rabbit
Rabbit
CEO
Jesse
Lyu
defended
the
Rabbit
R1
for
the
last
week,
telling
Gizmodo
and
other
outlets
that
it’s
“not
an
Android
app.”
Now,
he
may
have
to
defend
the
next
fatal
claim
for
an
AI
device:
that
it’s
not
just
a
ChatGPT
wrapper.
The
push-to-talk
feature
on
Rabbit
R1s
experienced
a
brief
outage
on
Thursday
night,
which
appears
to
be
caused
by
an
OpenAI
API
outage
that
occurred
at
the
same
time,
first
spotted
by
The
Verge.
Screenshot from Rabbit’s “bug-report” channel. Screenshot: Discord
“There
is
an
issue
with
PTT
queries
not
responding
and
we’re
working
on
it
urgently,”
said
a
customer
support
account
in
Rabbit’s
Discord
channel
on
Thursday
at
6:12
pm
ET.
“Vision
mode
is
still
operational.
Team
is
working
on
it
now.”
As
complaints
of
error
messages
filled
Rabbit’s
“bug-report”
Discord
channel,
OpenAI
reported
an
API
outage
on
its
status
page
at
6:06
pm
ET.
The
company
noted
“elevated
error
rates
on
fine-tuning
API
models
and
reserved
capacity.”
The
issue
was
resolved
for
OpenAI
roughly
45
minutes
later,
and
a
Rabbit
customer
support
account
updated
that
its
push-to-talk
feature
should
be
working
again
around
the
same
time.
Screenshot: OpenAI
OpenAI
and
Rabbit
did
not
immediately
respond
to
Gizmodo’s
request
for
comment.
It’s
unclear
at
this
time
whether
the
OpenAI
outage
truly
caused
the
Rabbit
outage,
but
it
seems
likely
given
how
the
R1
works.
Part
of
the
way
Rabbit
achieves
the
R1’s
relatively
low
price
point,
$200,
is
by
outsourcing
some
of
its
AI
processing.
In
a
January
interview
with
Fast
Company,
Lyu
noted
that
Rabbit
uses
OpenAI’s
ChatGPT
to
understand
its
users’
intentions.
Then,
Rabbit’s
proprietary
large
action
model
(LAM)
is
supposed
to
kick
into
gear
to
do
stuff
for
you,
such
as
play
music,
order
food,
and
so
on.
Emphasis on “supposed to.” As Gizmodo’s Dua Rashid points out, the Rabbit R1 isn’t great at doing stuff. When she tried to hitch a ride via the Uber app, the R1 got her pickup and drop-off location completely wrong on the first try. When using Spotify, she found the R1 would acknowledge her command to play a specific song, but then fail to actually play the song.
These hiccups were previewed by Jesse Lyu when he struggled to order McDonald’s on stage at a demo event. The R1 took roughly a minute to process his request and then displayed a random restaurant. He then blamed the DoorDash interface, not his LAM. Several minutes later, he was able to order a chicken McNugget combo meal.
Rabbit R1 - Hands On Live Unboxing Demo by Jesse Lyu [SUPERCUT]
Many find Rabbit’s proprietary technology difficult to use, but the R1 is still heavily reliant on other LLMs for basic functionality. OpenAI API outages are not uncommon either. In the last 90 days, the company’s status page shows roughly 10 days where partial or major outages occurred. While it’s unclear if these two events were directly related, Rabbit’s dependency on other AI models could prove to be an issue moving forward.