Home ‘Gaslit me so hard’ — Coffeezilla renews his assault on Rabbit R1 AI

‘Gaslit me so hard’ — Coffeezilla renews his assault on Rabbit R1 AI

tl;dr

  • Coffeezilla alleges Rabbit R1 as a scam built on false AI promises.
  • Rabbit Incorporation's rebuttal backfires, fueling further scrutiny.
  • The AI model Lamb, touted by Rabbit, is debunked as chatGPT with scripted functionalities.

YouTuber and investigator Coffeezilla has followed up on his initial blast aimed at the company responsible for the Rabbit R1 artificial intelligence (AI) device.

The online personality, real name Stephen Findeisen, who often takes a deep dive into various influencer scams, turned his ire on Rabbit Incorporation for what he described as a product “built on a scam”.

In response, the company played down Coffeezilla’s findings but instead of allaying concerns or providing answers, the rebuttal only provoked further scrutiny and bad publicity.

In part two of his investigation, Coffeezilla commenced the 18-minute-long YouTube broadcast with the following intro:

“This tech company gaslit me so hard about their previous scam that I decided to investigate their current project, Rabbit (R1), and what I found was shocking.”

Specifically, he wanted to break down what exactly was the AI model within the Rabbit R1 gadget, as purported by the company. It was claimed the AI embedded within the device, called Lamb, could be a life assistant which official publicity depicted as telling it, “Start my morning routine, order me an Uber and find me a good podcast to pass the time, oh and tell everybody that I might be late.” 

It could also supposedly check the fridge and reorder the ingredients from your last meal. The pitch appeared to be an impressive one as the marketing tools secured over $20 million worth of pre-orders.

But ‘Lamb as advertised does not exist’

Coffeezilla went on to excoriate Rabbit Incorporation, not on whether they were pushing a good or bad product, but on the AI credentials of Lamb.

“A group investigation has revealed that Rabbit is not actually using a new foundational AI model at all, it’s actually chatGPT with some hardcoded scripts, which is funny because Jesse (Lyu, RabbitR1 founder) says Rabbit is faster than chatGPT.”

He continued, “What really upsets me is not that it’s bad (Rabbit R1), it’s that the core selling point of this product is built on a lie and that lie is the Lamb.”

“I  think the best thing you could say at this point about Jesse and Rabbit is that they vastly over-promised and under-delivered, the worst you could say is (that) this is consumer fraud.” 

Coffeezilla punctuated his salvo with a claim that he spoke to an employee of Rabbit and on the condition of anonymity they stated that “Lamb as advertised does not exist.”

The investigator reached out to the company for a final response and the comments which included a statement (shared on the video) read, “You are not interested in taking a balanced or objective approach, or in working with us in good faith” and “Rabbit stands behind its product”.

Image credit: Coffeezilla/YouTube

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The ReadWrite Editorial policy involves closely monitoring the tech industry for major developments, new product launches, AI breakthroughs, video game releases and other newsworthy events. Editors assign relevant stories to staff writers or freelance contributors with expertise in each particular topic area. Before publication, articles go through a rigorous round of editing for accuracy, clarity, and to ensure adherence to ReadWrite's style guidelines.

Graeme Hanna
Tech Journalist

Graeme Hanna is a full-time, freelance writer with significant experience in online news as well as content writing. Since January 2021, he has contributed as a football and news writer for several mainstream UK titles including The Glasgow Times, Rangers Review, Manchester Evening News, MyLondon, Give Me Sport, and the Belfast News Letter. Graeme has worked across several briefs including news and feature writing in addition to other significant work experience in professional services. Now a contributing news writer at ReadWrite.com, he is involved with pitching relevant content for publication as well as writing engaging tech news stories.

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