CES 2024: Day 2 Recap
Rabbit’s R1 pocket companion, GPT Store opens for business, and more
Editor’s note: as we usually do with our CES recaps, we send them out as special editions of our Lab Weekly newsletter first before making them publicly available here on Medium. For more timely insights into consumer tech’s biggest event, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter here. Thanks for reading!
Welcome back to our special coverage of CES 2024. Two days in, the event is now in full swing! Keynote-wise, neither HD Hyundai nor Qualcomm announced anything particularly interesting or relevant to consumer brands in their sessions today, so we’ll skip right ahead to some of the late-breaking news out of CES on Wednesday.
First up, Rabbit, an AI hardware startup, announced that it has sold out 10,000 units of its R1 pocket AI companion in one day, as it benefited greatly from the CES buzz it received. The R1 pocket companion device essentially functions as a digital assistant that can actually do things for you, instead of just providing you with the information. Check out the company’s Apple-esque product launch video here.
Aiming to simplify the smartphone experience and create a more intuitive interface powered by AI, Rabbit took an interesting approach and developed a Large Action Model (LAM) that is capable of learning how to interface with any app or web service, so that it could order pizza or plan a whole trip on your behalf. All users have to do is to talk about what they need to get done, and then confirm the solutions that the R1 device comes up with.
There’s something valid about this “teach AI how to use a web interface” approach. Most smart assistants today are stuck on providing answers and rarely able to actually carry out an action. If you ask ChatGPT to book you a next-day flight to London, it can serve up the relevant flights, with links to book them, but it cannot book them on your behalf. So, turning Large Language Models (LLMs) into Large Action Model is an interesting approach that we could see more AI companies try to explore.
That said, I am not convinced that the R1 pocket companion is the right hardware to bring the LAM-based OS to market. No one really needs a smaller phone to control the apps on their regular phone, especially one with a not-so-great camera meant for enabling computer vision features. Selling this device at only $199 doesn’t seem very profitable, and Rabbit doesn’t seem to have a viable monetization model yet either. Plus, this successful CES launch might actually be a curse in disguise, considering the strain it puts on the company to quickly scale up the manufacturing of R1. I’d be glad to be proven wrong, but the odds are stacked against Rabbit.
In other CES news, Kia got Uber to sign on as its first customer for the PV5 modular EV, which is on a flexible vehicle architecture, with different swappable body types, so that the vehicle can be transformed from a minivan to a full-size van to a small truck, depending on the specific need. Kia said the partnership will enhance EV offerings available on Uber’s mobility platform and support the ride-hailing giant in achieving its 2040 zero-emissions goal.
Some other interesting CES announcements this year that we’ve missed in previous recaps include:
Amazon announced adding support for Matter casting for Prime Video. Matter casting is a feature of the Matter smart home standard that allows you to control TVs and streaming devices straight from a connected app. It’s like Apple’s AirPlay or Google’s Chromecast, but part of an open source protocol, so it’s available to every app or hardware maker to implement and not limited to specific devices or partnerships. Amazon says support is coming soon to Fire TVs, which could further boost the visibility and adoption of not just Matter casting, but hopefully also the Matter protocol overall among smart home device makers.
In related news, Google and Samsung teamed up to make sharing on Android a lot easier. Android’s Nearby Share will adopt the same name as Samsung’s sharing protocol and become Quick Share. Other updates are coming to Chromecast, which will soon be able to cast content from the TikTok app to your TV.
Lastly, a quick shout out to a smart lock called Lockly Visage, which is basically Face ID but for opening doors. Great name; clear use case. Surprised no one has done it sooner. Philips has also debuted a new biometric lock at CES that uses a built-in palm scanner to unlock your door. So, perhaps soon, it will be “phone, wallet, and face / palm” when you go out.
Besides CES, the biggest tech news of the day was indisputably the official launch of OpenAI’s custom GPT Store. When OpenAI doesn’t have an official presence at CES this year, its influence on the tech industry has been deeply felt in the numerous times that ChatGPT has been mentioned in both product announcements and causal chatters among the attendees. With the GPT Store now open for business, paid users of ChatGPT can now share and find custom chatbots made by third-party developers. Could this be the new App Store moment for AI chatbots? So far, over 3 million custom chatbots have been created, per Bloomberg, and OpenAI says it plans to start sharing revenue in Q1 2024.
In other OpenAI news, the company is reportedly in talks with CNN and Fox Corp. to license their text, video, and image content for training its LLM. Considering that OpenAI is currently being sued by the New York Times for AI plagiarism, it will be interesting to see what kind of licensing deals that CNN and Fox would manage to get, and how that may move the needle on the Times lawsuit.
IPG at CES
Adam Simon, managing director of the Lab, kicked off our CES content sessions on Wednesday morning with a lively and gem-packed opening keynote, highlighting many of the key trends we spotted at CES this year.
Two Lab presentations on the trends shaping the future of entertainment and healthcare followed, led by Richard Yao and Ryan Miller, respectively.
The morning of CES learning was capped off with a report on the media landscape and ad market from Dani Benowitz, President of MAGNA.
Elsewhere in ARIA, our VP of Strategy, Chelsea Freitas was part of a panel held on Wednesday morning at the Female Quotient Equality Lounge. The topic at hand was how tech is moving mental health forward, and especially how women are taking ownership of their mental wellbeing with the help of digital health tools.
Our lovely colleagues at the IPG Commerce team also put on an afternoon of insightful and thought-provoking content sessions that focus on retail tech. Check out their content line-up here and on LinkedIn, which happens to include my favorite session title of this entire CES — “Help! I Can’t Keep Up With Growing Shopper Expectations!”
Coming Up
Lab’s content session continues on Thursday with a powerful quartet of presentations set to unlock the latest innovations in mobility, luxury, the at-home economy, and play (aka toys and gaming), and how these trends relate to brands, all happening at the Encore Fairway Villa!
As the Lab focuses on the last day of our remaining CES programming, thus concludes our daily recaps of CES 2024. The show floors will remain open until Friday, so be sure to go check them out if you get a chance before then. We’ll be back soon with a more comprehensive report of all the CES trends we saw this year. Stay tuned!
