Funnily enough, almost all of the third-party integrations the company has introduced – DoorDash, Uber, Midjourney and others – are being discontinued, so these features simply don’t work. (Not that they worked before). The scroll wheel is less jerky and the interface improvements are welcome. For example, you can now press and hold the push-to-talk button and scroll up or down to change the volume.
There’s been a litany of R1 updates throughout the year, but three stand out: Beta Rabbit, LAM Playground, and Teach Mode.
Beta Rabbit uses improved huge language models to provide a more conversational experience when you ask R1 anything. I didn’t find it as conversational as GPT-4o or Gemini Live. I asked how we knew anything about the early years of the universe, and he started reading a passage. At one point she mentioned a “cosmic microwave background,” and I interrupted and asked how it was detected. R1 then launched into a tirade: “Searching for the Cosmic Microwave Background,” “Searching for this,” and “Searching for that.” After five of them, he finally started reading the answer about CMB.
LAM Playground is an compelling feature available on the Rabbit website. These “big action models” run in a virtual browser that you can interact with, and their main purpose is to show you how Rabbit will be able to perform tasks on your behalf. (You know, because it couldn’t do it at launch!) Type in the prompt and Rabbit’s bots will do it. For example, you can ask it to find an item and add it to your Amazon cart, although you’ll have to log into Amazon through this virtual browser, which seems to pose a huge privacy risk.
I asked him to Google “best office chair” and then he directed me to the seller’s website. It took too long and entered “best office chair reviews 2023”. (Is the R1 on a different timeline?) But it still got to the first result (which is my own guide to office chairs, thank you very much) and took me to the product page Branch Pro ergonomic chairmy top recommendation.
While LAM Playground lets you see how it all works, Teaching Mode lets you put it into action. It’s still in beta (I’d argue R1 is in beta too). After several attempts, an error occurred that made it impossible to utilize this feature. Finally it worked on another day. I created a lesson and then followed the steps in a virtual browser – R1 records every click. Then, when I told my R1 to perform an action, it mimicked my actions.