Motorola makes Rabbit R1 even more irrelevant, working on AI LAMs for phones

Motorola is trying to do with AI LAMs what Rabbit set out to attempt – develop an AI model that could transform your commands into action successfully. Motorola’s new experiment sticks an AI capable of ordering coffee or calling an Uber on your phone.

At the beginning of the year, Rabbit set out to develop a new sort of AI model called an “LAM.” LAM stands for “Large Action Model.” Compared to the LLMs we had gotten so used to in 2023, the purpose of an LAM is to take speech, recognize it, and translate it into action. The Rabbit R1 was the first device to attempt to run on this sort of model, though it did not work as intended.

Users expressed frustration with the performance of the R1, noting that the LAM wasn’t capable of completing tasks effectively or up to the standards the company itself set. On top of that, many wondered why the R1 would need to exist if an LAM could potentially run on a phone – something most have in their pocket at all times.

That’s exactly what Motorola announced it was working on at Lenovo Tech World ’24. According to the company responsible for the newest Razr and Razr+, an LAM is being experiemented with that can do exactly the things others have set ut to achieve.

In a demo video, a user can be seen commanding Motorola’s LAM to order an Americano from a particular widespread coffee chain. The LAM scrolls through the Starbucks app and adds the specified coffee to the cart, orders it, and lets the user know exactly where to grab it and when it’ll be ready.

The video also showcases the same person ordering an Uber through speech and no text input. They do not specify which store location they want to go to, but they note that they want to go to the chain location near their apartment. The LAM recognizes that criteria and orders an Uber for the Whole Foods near where they live.

Remember that this is a demo and generally just a proof of concept. A concept that has already been advertised to users in the past by other companies.

This comes as Motorola announced a Moto AI beta program for current devices. The new AI model will be able to act on commands like “Catch me up” to summarize communications and “Pay attention” to begin transcribed conversation recording for later recall.

Motorola notes that the concept LAM will be able to learn habits and act accordingly, learning along the way. The company does not specify a release date or anything remotely concrete, only that it wants to bring it to its devices in the future. If that happens, devices like the R1 might not be useful, especially when Motorola’s most popular phones are also square.