Rabbit Inc. Faked Their Demo (Again)
rentry.coIs this written by someone that lost money gambling on NFTs? I don't think the demo is particularly bad and it's known that demos are the happy path so don't expect full functionality in the recording. I think every customer demo I have ever done has involved some form of magic or omissions while features were built in the background. Having not heard of this company before it looks like they have made a few attempts at different ventures but unless this is an outright scam I don't think it's worth hammering like this. People need to try things and sometimes ideas don't work out.
The authors anonymously make assertions of fraud, but clearly have an axe to grind with Rabbit.
This piece is interesting in how peculiar it is, but I'd say not newsworthy.
I did learn at least that there is some NFT history behind the company rabbit, which I was unaware of.
Not clearing them from their wrong, but it's worth mentioning that Steve Jobs demo'ed the iPhone while many features were still in development / unstable - he had to follow a "golden path" or else the demo iPhone would likely crash.
A golden path is not a fake demo. These things are not the same.
It's a demo / proof-of-concept during product development, at the end it doesn't really matter if it's spontaneous or was prepared / optimized for by doing a test take.
As long as it is released to the public with the functionalities and performance that were promised.
This seems like an overly aggressive article? I'm not sure if all exposes are like this, but they seem to be assuming a lot on very little evidence. IMO having a bit of respect/empathy for a startup is a good thing...
The follow up tweet cleared it up, he clicked the wrong item in the list during the demo…
https://x.com/jessechenglyu/status/1767363848145969315?s=46&...
Definitely overly aggressive gotcha type stuff. Journos usually give a chance for a response before writing such attacks.
Even clicking the wrong link, the audio says
"Our mission is to create the simplest computer, something so intuitive you don't need to learn to use it"
and the transcript for the one they selected says
"The meeting focused on creating a simple and intuitive computer, without the need for learning how to use it".
So while it's understandable they selected the wrong entry, it is a bit curious that the audio mismatches from the transcript of the one they selected.
Perhaps they're running the audio capture though some sort of GPT to make it more like naturally written?
That's because journalists know that there are consequences for defamation. Publishing a false accusation and encouraging a boycott of the company is a good way to get yourself sued for libel.
I'm not defending the typo, but sometimes I will intentionally change one letter before deploying as a janky way to make sure that I'm using the new build. He claims the typo was 'intentional' so I wonder if that's the reason?
It could also be that the developers working on those parts of the software are in China, and that they don't really read latin letters or speak English. The same way an English-speaker wouldn't spot a typo in Chinese.
I do this all the time. Change a character so I can quickly see that I’m running the build that I thought when iterating internally.
This theory makes the most sense to me.
I don’t know, it was a pretty simple demo (just audio recording, transcription, and summarizing) so would it really be worth faking? The only things the article mentions are the typo (which actually makes me think it’s more likely to be real than faked) and the audio mismatch (which he explains on twitter was simply because he clicked an earlier recording accidentally - makes sense, I would do a dry run before actually recording the demo too).
I don't know anything about this controversy, but it's refreshing to see a bunch of people not immediately assuming guilt and crucifying.
A copy-text typo in a pre-production UI seems totally fine?
The audio clip mismatch is a bit more questionable, but the simplest explanation is that they recorded two takes of the demo, and accidentally played back the clip from the previous take.
The only really damning thing is that this is something Siri could do a decade ago.
You can literally see that he clicks on the 12.27 recording instead of the 12.28 or 12.29 recordings.
Seems like a typical MediaTek gadget like the Android-based pocket translators that you can bring with you in travel.
No reason to think it's not possible or fake ? and otherwise it's very close to being real and doable.
The device seems like a recorder + some speech transcription (probably open-source like whisper or similar), nothing really crazy or impossible.
We already know that "Fake it until you make it" is a soft scam in Silicon Valley.
But how far will these companies go to fake their own products in front of VCs and customers to qualify as deceptive advertising?
Might as well go for 90% of these other vapourware tech / AI companies promising their snake oil to the public.
Are you serious?