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The Rabbit R1 wowed the tech world at CES 2024 earlier this year, and it's now been confirmed that the first 10,000 of these little AI-powered gadgets are going to be heading to the first people who preordered them in the US and Canada from Sunday, March 31.

As per a Rabbit post on social media (via Engadget), the first batch of devices will start leaving the factory on that date, though they may take three weeks or so to get into the hands of customers, due to various international and US customs processes.

If you were one of the first 10,000 people in the US to get your name down for a Rabbit R1, you can expect it around April 24th, Rabbit says. Of course there's always the chance of further delays, but that's the current estimate.

According to the FAQ on the Rabbit website, the second batch of orders will be shipping in April and May, with the third batch heading to customers during May and June, for US and Canada addresses. If you're in the UK or EU, shipping is expected to start by late April.

If you're completely new to the Rabbit R1, it functions a little like a smartphone, only there's an AI assistant doing all the jobs that apps normally do queueing up music, taking photos, booking hotels, and so on and so on.

In fact, the Rabbit software is clever enough to interact with your mobile apps, once you've shown it what to do. It's an interesting new take on the pocket computer, and it's attracted a lot of early buzz in the industry.

We know the Rabbit R1 is going to be powered, at least in part, by the Perplexity AI engine: this means you'll be able to chat with the device in the same way as you would with ChatGPT or with Copilot from Microsoft.

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You can still order the Rabbit R1 from Rabbit for $199 (about 160 / AU$305), though it might be a while before you get it. Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu recently shared a demo of the device in action, if you want to get a feel of how it works.

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The first batch of Rabbit R1 AI devices will be shipping next week - TechRadar