Marques Brownlee slams another AI product as “barely reviewable” after Humane AI Pin controversy

Marques Brownlee has slammed another AI product, this time the Rabbit R1, calling the device “barely reviewable” just days after sharing similar criticism in his Humane AI Pin review. 

Marques Brownlee, better known as MKBHD, has found himself in hot water the past month after he gave the Humane AI Pin a scathing review. His criticism sparked backlash as many on social media in turn criticized the tech YouTuber for “potentially killing” the product with his review. 

Now just a few weeks removed from the Humane AI Pin controversy, Brownlee has found himself discussing yet another portable AI product, this time Rabit’s R1, criticizing it as a “barely reviewable” product. 

The Rabbit R1 is an AI pocket companion that can be used like Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant. But it also has the added functionality of doing things like ordering off DoorDash, image recognition, and Spotify control.

Brownlee was quick to criticize various aspects of the R1 in his review, from its physical and GUI design to the product’s packaging including just the R1 and a stand with no charging cable or instruction manual. 

And while he admitted that the R1’s implementation of a Large Action Model AI is a “cool idea”, he pointed out that Rabbit does not have enough training data to implement features buyers may want. 

This was the crux of Brownlee’s review, as he reiterated that because the R1 lacks training data, it needs to be gathered more from users. But for users to give Rabbit data, they’ll need to buy the R1, which in itself is lacking in features and results in consumers getting a lackluster product. 

“A lot of these tech companies are developing tech kinda backward,” Brownlee explained. “They’re delivering such unfinished products that it actually makes them nearly impossible to review.” 

Brownlee compared it to a recent trend in video games where games are released at full price in Early Access with a lot of missing features and bugs, and it’s only later in the future when the full experience is finally released with features added and bugs squashed. 

“Now these AI-based products are at like the apex of this horrible trend where the thing you get at the beginning is like borderline non-functional compared to all the promises and all the features and all things that are supposed to maybe someday be. But you still pay full price at the beginning, which is what makes it so crazy,” Brownlee said. 

The founder and CEO of Rabbit, Jesse Lyu, responded to Brownlee’s review of the R1, acknowledging that the R1 is still polishing itself as it gathers more user data, thanking MKBHD for his review and saying he was “looking forward” to a re-review of the R1 in the future. 

“We shall see how fast R1 improves and evolves. We are a tiny team trying to catch the fast pace of AI,” Lyu said. “The current level of AI needs strong human-supervised fine-tuning. You can’t take your time polishing features without real user testing.”