This is why we can’t have nice things
Recently, I discussed how the Rabbit R1 seemed more reliable than the AI Pin — a view echoed in MKBHD’s review. Though admittedly, neither tool is particularly groundbreaking; at least the Rabbit R1 appeared to be the better of the two.
However, the reality has proven to be even more disappointing than the AI Pin itself. Today, while checking my emails, a HackerNews link popped up, discussing the Rabbit R1 LAM SO and its source code. At first glance, there seemed to be nothing new — just another startup navigating the ruthless waves of capitalism, convincing venture capitalists and customers to invest in a product society doesn’t really need.
But what’s truly alarming is the approach they’re taking. Before reading on, take a deep breath and maybe sip some juice from your Juicero. Here’s what’s happening:
rabbit.tech has been making waves with its highly publicized release of the Rabbit R1 device, claiming it can perform tasks on your behalf and liberate you from app-based interactions. But let’s call a spade a spade — this is a blatant lie. And we’re about to expose it with the first partial release of the source code for its so-called “large action model”.
For those with a technical background, it’s painfully clear that there’s no artificial intelligence or large action model in sight. In reality, they’re simply relying on several Playwright automation scripts to do the job for you, which is why they only support four apps: Spotify, Midjourney, Doordash, and UberEats.
What’s even more alarming is that they ask you to login through their web portal, which is just a virtual machine connected via NoVNC. They also expect you to fill in your private passwords on their VMs. To make matters worse, they store the user sessions on their machines without any additional layers of security. This is both a blatant disregard for user privacy and a hilariously bad engineering practice.
Sadly, this shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who’s done minimal due diligence on the team. After all, they were still hawking NFTs just two years ago.
Spread the word and stay vigilant.
I know.
