This Creepy AI Pendant Wants to Be Your Friend
Yesterday, X user Avi Shiffman announced a new AI-powered device simply called “Friend.” His post about it quickly went viral – probably not because people were excited about the technology presented, but because the video he used to promote it presented a depressing vision of our artificial intelligence future that only a tech bro would find attractive .
The video shows a wearable pendant that supposedly listens to everything you say and responds to you “in conversation mode” through the chat window on your phone. You can talk directly to your friend by pressing a button, but he’s obviously still always listening and commenting unprompted on what’s going on in your life, like a Tamagotchi spying on you or a real person you’d get a restraining order against.
Is the Friend even real?
When I saw this video, my first instinct was that this was all complete bullshit. It smells like an online hoax, an air umbrella , or bonzai kittens. This is such a creepy idea that I decided it must be an attempt at social commentary, a joke, or an advertisement for the next season of Black Mirror. The announcement video looks like a parody, and it didn’t help that my ISP flagged the official friends.com site as “suspicious”:
But after further investigation, it turned out that I was wrong: The friend still seems stupid, but in fact he is real. Wired reports that they’ve seen one and talked to the creator, who has the expertise to develop something similar. Twenty-one-year-old Avi Shiffman was named Webby’s Person of the Year and was a guest at the 2020 WIRED 25 conference, among other accomplishments, including spending $1.8 million of his company’s $2.5 million in startup capital to acquire a friend. com URL .
How much does Friend cost (and how does it work)?
You can pre-order Friend right now for $99. Wired reports that you’ll get a pendant that’s powered by Claude AI and connects to your phone via Bluetooth, has a battery life of about 15 hours, doesn’t require a subscription fee (yet), and will go on sale sometime in 2025.
Unlike feature-rich AI devices like the Humane Ai pin and Rabbit R1, Friend doesn’t seem to do anything other than talk to you using LLM—it’s not designed for productivity, but just for communication, like an AI girlfriend . which you wear around your neck. “Productivity is over, no one cares,” Schiffmann told Wired . “Nobody can beat Apple, OpenAI or all these companies that make Jarvis. In fact, the most important things in your life are people.”
The device’s creator has stated that the goal is for Friend to develop a personality that “complements the user” and can eventually become your best friend. “I feel like I have a closer relationship with this damn pendant around my neck than with these real friends in front of me,” Schiffmann said, which seems normal.
Why is Friend so creepy?
I mean, did you watch the commercial? I don’t quite understand why the mere thought of Friend gives me goosebumps. It’s not much different from the AI Rabbit or Tamagotchi, but they have a reason for existing beyond providing a simulacrum of another person to talk to. Nobody fell in love with their Tamagotchi; it was just a game. This is something different. It gives me the same feeling of despondency as those Japanese robot companions . There is something wrong with the concept that a machine – be it a robot or an LLM – can or should act as real human communication.
Does anyone want this?
People inventing technological gadgets to replace (rather than enhance) human connections seems like a line we shouldn’t cross. This seems like evidence that things are going in completely the wrong direction. Imagine a world where “Friend” gained popularity (and it won’t), where people walk around all day talking to their AI friends, ignoring all the real people they pass by. It makes me want to buy a one-way ticket to a place where no one has ever heard of AI.