AI Companion 'Friend' Raises Concerns Over Privacy and Dependency

Friend is the new AI companion that social media believes is beyond parody

A good AI wearable is hard to come by these days. And as tech startups like HumaneAI and Rabbit R1 attempt to reinvent the wheel with minimalist versions of our smartphones, an upcoming device called Friend just wants to be there for you instead, if its ad is to be believed. Friend, a wearable orb-like AI companion you wear around your neck was created by Avi Schifmann, most known for a website he built in 2020 to help track the spread of Covid-19. According to Schifmann's interview with outlets The Verge and WIRED, Friend is merely that, a friend. Its purpose isn't to handle tasks or improve productivity but to provide a supportive presence, offering advice and encouragement when needed. Schiffmann, who has been working on this idea for years, unveiled the project on Tuesday. And the social media responses were not kind. To be fair though, the reveal trailer is pretty. One X user even claims -- in the form of a rap(!?) -- that Friend was his idea. It also doesn't help that, after raising $2.5 million in funds, the founder then spent $1.8 million of it on the domain name for his company's product. Thus, what we're left with and what was shown in the reveal trailer is essentially a Bluetooth device strapped to your neck that is always listening. This is so it can send you texts on your phone. Per the site's FAQ page, "your friend is always listening and forming their own internal thoughts. We have given your friend free will for when they decide to reach out to you." Understandably, that might sound a bit creepy. The site reassures would-be buyers that nothing is tracked, recorded, or written down. They promise all data is "end-to-end encrypted" and deletable through the Friend app -- which, FYI, is only available for iOS. Oh, and if you break your Friend, you'll need to start over with a new one. If you want to get your hands on one, you'll have to wait. Pre-orders are starting at $99.99 and according to the site, will tentatively ship in Q1 of next year. Maybe during that time, you can make actual friends.

Friend Is an 'Always Listening' AI Companion Necklace That Texts You

The $99 wearable will listen to what you say and serve up encouragement, trash talk, or general conversation when it has something to say. Hollywood loves an AI companion, but they've struggled to attract real-world buyers. The Rabbit R1 needs more smarts, while Humane is reportedly ready to throw in the towel on the AI Pin. That's not stopping Avi Schiffmann, who's pitching a necklace-based AI called Friend. Schiffmann, who made headlines for developing a COVID-19 tracker during the pandemic, initially envisioned Friend as a productivity-focused device known as Tab. But as he tells The Verge, "no one is going to beat Apple or OpenAI at building Jarvis," so the re-imagined wearable is built to combat loneliness. "Friend is an expression of how lonely I've felt," Schiffmann writes in a blog post. "We can't wait to hear how Friend fits into your life." The premise is fairly simple. It's an AI-powered gadget that you wear around your neck like a pendant. You then talk to Friend like you would a normal person. After a moment, it'll respond to you via text. When connected via Bluetooth, the device can be set to always listening so that it's continually taking in information and reaching out when it has something to say. If that sounds a little invasive, Friend says "No audio or transcripts are stored past your friend's context window. Your data is end-to-end encrypted. All memories can be deleted in one click within the friend app." A video for Friend shows it giving someone encouragement on a hike, trash talking a gamer, and discussing a show someone is streaming on their phone. Friend's messages pop up with human names -- Amy, Jackson, and Emily -- suggesting you can pick your own moniker. In the end of the video, a girl whose date comments that Friend "goes everywhere with you" decides against calling on her Friend in that moment, suggesting the device may become less necessary as people form real-world bonds. The dreamy clip and its soundtrack will likely draw comparisons to Black Mirror or the movie Her, but for now there is no voice component from the AI. Reaction has been mixed; replies to Schiffmann's announcement tweet are all over the map. Marques Brownlee, who had a particularly harsh review of the Rabbit R1, said: "wait this isn't a skit?" 404 Media also reports that the company spent most of its funds to buy the friend.com domain name for $1.8 million. Friend is available for preorder for $99, which is $100 cheaper than the Rabbit R1 and $600 cheaper than the AI Pin. At launch, Friend will work with iOS devices, with Android potentially coming at a later date if the demand is high enough. It comes with a white case, a USB-C charging cable, and two gray lanyards.

This wearable AI wants to be your 'Friend' -- which is as creepy as it sounds

One of the hottest new trends in tech is turning into a necklace guy. Mark Zuckerberg has gone all out on showcasing his necklace love of late -- he's like the Flava Flav of Silicon Valley. But what happens when two of tech's biggest trends collide? Well, you get AI necklaces like the Limitless Pendant, which is a productivity-focused device that captures your day through transcription and dictaphone-like services. On the other hand, you get something like the recently announced Friend -- which, as the name implies, is all about companionship and bringing it to you in the most jilted and disorganized way possible. Just like a real friend. Friend is a new AI wearable from the mind of Avi Schiffmann, a web developer who gained fame in 2020 for building a website that helped to track the spread of COVID-19. Since then, Schiffmann has switched his focus to converting our AI digital assistants into digital companions -- 'friends' that we carry with us throughout our days, always listening and free to reach out as and when it pleases to provide a more authentic experience of interacting with another and effectively combating loneliness. The result is Friend, a $99 AI wearable pendant (or friendant, if you will), that acts not as the copilot to your computing experiences, but as one for your real life. "Not imaginary" is the tagline of this product, though admittedly, while an actual thing, your friendship with it likely will be. In reality, you'll be just as friendless, though now sat in a corner somewhere talking to your magical neck chain. Which if anybody wasn't aware, doesn't showcase you to others are potential friend material. However, suspension of disbelief is a powerful thing, and I won't deny the potential of software like this to provide relief from loneliness or a measure of comfort for those more insular, shy, or reserved in nature -- regardless of how much this seems like viral marketing for an upcoming series of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror. If there's a lesson to be learned from the recent wave of AI wearables and pocket devices that have flopped, it would be this: Why isn't it an app? Reflecting on the Rabbit r1, this well-marketed pocket-sized AI assistant, with its Nothing-adjacent Teenage Engineering design, caught major attention on its reveal. However, not long after its release, it was revealed that the r1 was basically an Android app in a fancy plastic shell. In the case of the r1, at least it provided an all-in-one experience. Many AI wearables still require access to your smartphone to interact with a proprietary app. Friend is no different. The pendant around your neck acts like an always-listening, space-age, walkie-talkie for voice capture, leaving your phone to do the heavy lifting. With no built-in speaker, every time you talk with your friend you will need to bring out your phone to check for a reply. Which defeats the purpose of having an external device in the first place. From everything seen so far, the Friend is a great big Siri button/microphone that diverts from Apple's digital assistant to a somewhat more conversational option instead. So why isn't it an app? Well, that's likely due to counteracting Apple's pesky privacy-first approach, with the pendant the easiest way to allow the Friend to always be listening for an opportunity to respond. While the creator claims that audio and transcripts aren't sored past the device's context window and that all data is end-to-end encrypted, it's unlikely that an app would be able to secure the right amount of privileges to make Friend's always on, always listening, always available state a reality. Before I dismiss the Friend out of hand, as creepy as its video reveal might have been, there is potential in a device like this. Just, maybe not for watching trailers with you or being a hiking companion. A device like Friend, if it could potentially avoid its reliance on smart phones as an intermediary, would make a great companion for the elderly (to be fair, it does already strongly resemble a personal alarm necklace for the aged), those with ability impairments, or even those with mental ill-health like depressive disorders or anxiety. Having a believable companion to hand who is always listening and willing to interject or reach out as it feels is actually a rather beneficial application of this wearable. Though its marketing seems to be swaying leaning into the friendant being an irreplaceable life companion with vaguely awkward undertones. Still, how it works in reality is a whole other ball game. There's potential here, but we'll need to wait until the Friend begins shipping in Q1 2025 to find out how much.

New AI companion goes all Black Mirror, listens to absolutely everything and dies if you lose it

We've been here already in the movies. Now it's time to try it in real life. The notion of AI becoming your intimate artificial friend, even partner, is nothing new. But it just came a step closer to reality with the new Friend. Yes, this new AI companion is just called "Friend" and sets out to do exactly what it says on the tin. To be your friend. And that's pretty much it. The physical manifestation of the Friend is a circular pendant on a necklace that looks a little like an Apple AirTag at a glance. It's the brainchild of serial entrepreneur and 21-year-old tech-bro extraordinaire Avi Schiffmann, and it's essentially a chatbot that sits around your neck and listens to absolutely everything. That allows the Friend to engage in fully context-aware buddy interactions which take the form of texts or notifications on the smartphone to which it is paired. And that's it. There's no clever productivity functionality. It won't code a website, fold proteins, or even book a restaurant. It just talks to you. As Schiffmann said in an interview with Wired, "productivity is over, no one cares. No one is going to beat Apple or OpenAI or all these companies that are building Jarvis. The most important things in your life really are people." People and, presumably, AI Friends. You can watch the launch trailer right here and very likely a flurry of questions will leap to mind. Is this for real? Surely this is satire? Who is it really aimed at? For sure, the trailer feels like something you'd see inserted into a satirical near-future sci-fi flick, something superficially plausible but hugely problematic the moment you begin to consider the implications of it all. The most obvious immediate issue, of course, is the idea that it's always on, all the time. That throws up all kinds of fairly hideous privacy problems, both for the user and anyone who is within AI earshot. Notably, the Friend doesn't just respond to your questions or comments, it can push unprompted quips and observations as it sees fit. To quote the Friend website, "we have given your friend free will for when they decide to reach out to you." If you're wondering what's powering it all, well, Schiffmann has opted for Anthropic AI's Claude 3.5 large language model. The idea is that the Friend will develop a distinct personality over time, one that complements your own. Intriguingly, the Friend FAQ reveals that this personality and its memories are specific to the device itself. "Your friend and their memories are attached to the physical device. If you lose or damage your friend there is no recovery plan," the FAQ says. It doesn't comment on what happens if the device dies of its own accord. The actual cost of the Friend, meanwhile, is $99 with no subscription. The pendant's website claims that the first pre-orders will begin shipping in early 2025 and is currently only available in the US and Canada. As for Schiffmann himself, remarkably he is just 21 years old, a Harvard dropout and yet still has quite the tech resume. In 2020, he built one of the first websites for tracking Covid cases across the world, garnering a Webby Person of the Year. Then in 2022, he created a website for refugees fleeing from Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion and helping them match with hosts in neighbouring countries. Truly, it's hard to know what to make of the Friend. Without using one, it's hard to draw conclusions about how compelling the interactions may be. But if the device is for real, the implications are truly head-spinning. Certainly, it's easy to be totally cynical, to question whether the whole thing isn't a massive practical joke. The trailer can certainly be viewed as a subtle but pretty effective critique of the very idea behind the device. The triangular relationship it implies in the final scene is particularly unsettling. Equally, it's all too easy to dismiss this kind of thing, to overlook the problem of loneliness and the people who might benefit most from an AI friend. But then the trailer doesn't seem to be addressing that market. It's all young, attractive people seemingly having their already rich and fulfilling lives made even better through the addition of an all-hearing AI companion. In some ways, the Friend might be viewed as more augmented inner dialogue than a separate entity, a perspective which could make the whole prospect of being friends with a bunch of code less weird. It's an interactive version of yourself being reflected back at you, not a being in its own right. Ultimately, it's hard to ignore the conclusion that even if the Friend itself isn't a goer, some aspects of it aren't likely to be integrated into other services. Most people would probably appreciate an AI assistant in their phone that had at least a touch of "personality" that was sympathetic to their own, right? In that regard, the Friend may be a little like those other now notorious AI gadgets, the Rabbit R1 and Humane AI Pin. Neither makes sense as a stand-alone device, but both arguably hit on functionality or at least interaction models that will likely inform how we use AI-augmented devices like smartphones in future.

Friend is another strange AI wearable that'll give you creepy Black Mirror vibes

Wearable devices powered by artificial intelligence have been having a moment recently, with the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 catching the world's attention - often for the wrong reasons. But despite these high-profile flops, another AI wearable has just emerged on the scene, and it might be one of the strangest offerings yet. Called Friend, this new device takes the form of a medallion that's attached to a lanyard and worn around your neck. It can pick up on things you're doing and saying, and then send you friendly comments in the form of text messages sent to your phone. To use Friend, you push a button in the medallion's center and say something, then the device will reply using the aforementioned text messages. Friend costs $99, giving it an advantage over the $699 Humane AI Pin and the $199 Rabbit R1. It's only compatible with iOS devices for now, with the creators saying, "We will support Android in the future depending on demand." It's due to start shipping in Q1 2025. Despite the chummy aim of the device, there seems to be a lot of potential for Friend to cross the line from chirpy pal to creepy know-it-all. Take the Friend promotional video, for example. In one scene, a woman is watching a video on her phone while eating a falafel wrap. The Friend device comments on the on-screen content and asks how the person's meal is. It's unclear how exactly it knew what the woman was eating, leaving an uncanny aftertaste to the video. Elsewhere in the trailer, a man is playing a video game with his friends and is being roundly beaten, even commenting that he hates the game. The Friend device then responds - without any prompting from the man - and mocks him by saying that his performance is "embarrassing." That implies that the device is potentially always listening to your conversations - after all, it wasn't prompted to speak by its owner - and the Friend website confirms this, saying "When connected via Bluetooth, your Friend is always listening and forming their own internal thoughts. We have given your Friend free will for when they decide to reach out to you." Friend's creators say that data is end-to-end encrypted and does not leave your device, but there are still some pretty substantial privacy implications with a product that's always listening to what you say. As well as that, there's the question of whether a device like this will help or hinder people in terms of healthy relationships. It seems reasonable to ask whether it's a good idea to encourage people to form a parasocial friendship with an inanimate object rather than with real people. While it might help provide temporary relief for lonely people, it's hardly a long-term solution. We'll find out what kind of impact the Friend will have when it launches next year. It will be interesting to see if it can avoid the fate of the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 - and tame some of its creepier aspects.

Combating Loneliness with Friend

Avi Schiffmann, a Harvard dropout, has launched a new AI device called "Friend" today. The wearable AI companion, designed to combat loneliness, is priced at $99 and is set to start shipping in January 2025. The device, worn as a necklace, allows users to speak their minds and interact with an AI companion. It connects to smartphones via bluetooth and is always listening, forming its own internal thoughts and proactively reaching out to users. A user posted on X, saying that "Loneliness is a growing issue, and Avi Schiffman might have the solution." The key features of "Friend" include, no subscription fees, privacy protection with end-to-end encryption, no storage of audio or transcripts beyond the context window, ability to pause interactions and review conversations. However, if the device is lost or damaged, there is no recovery plan for the memories stored on it. AI Wearables Everywhere The development of AI-powered wearables is not new, but there is a growing interest in creating these devices. A few months ago, the US-based company Limitless launched the Limitless Pendant, an AI-powered wearable that captures user insights while ensuring privacy through features like Consent Mode, which selectively records voices with user consent. Similarly, Humane AiPin, another AI wearable, seeks to reduce smartphone dependency and has generated excitement with upcoming features like AI agents, gesture-based unlocking, and Google Calendar integration. Beyond the US, South Korea's VTouch introduced the WIZPR ring, which enhances human-computer interaction through voice-based AI commands. Not being the first to introduce, earlier in 2020, Schiffmann has gained recognition for his COVID-19 tracking website, which provided up-to-date information on COVID-19 cases globally. The site gained hundreds of millions of users worldwide and was praised by health agencies and experts. As the AI wearable market continues to evolve, "Friend" represents a unique approach focused on emotional companionship rather than productivity or multitasking.

AI necklace for $99 to be your companion

A new AI hardware startup now promises to combat loneliness. Founded by a Harvard dropout, Avi Schiffmann, the startup is working on an AI wearable device called Friend that can be worn as a necklace. The gadget reportedly will connect to your phone via Bluetooth and keep listening to you and act as an AI companion. Users can tap on the walkie talkie button on the hardware and speak into the device. It can also respond to users via its app like a text. Given that the gadget is around your neck, Schiffmann said that users should find it more accessible than say speaking with an AI chatbot that's usually on a system. Priced at $99, the startup said it expects to start shipping products from January 2025 and will start taking preorders for its basic version. (For top technology news of the day, subscribe to our tech newsletter Today's Cache) The company released a promotional clip showing a group of young people doing several activities together has since gone viral on X. Can Rabbit r1 eat your smartphone? According to a TechCrunch report, the startup has already raised $2.5 million in funding at a $50 million valuation with participation from Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas, founders of blockchain platform Solana, Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, Morning Brew CEO and co-founder Austin Rief and Google senior product manager Logan Kilpatrick. Last year, Schiffmann had a different venture - a $600 pendant called Tab that tracks people's activities and transcribes meetings. The device had already received $100,000 worth of preorders. Earlier this year, Rabbit AI and Humane AI had emerged as two prominent examples in the AI wearables segment but received disappointing reviews for their devices after release. Read Comments

Covid-era whiz kid is back, and he brought a Friend -- a wearable, always listening, $99 AI companion

A friend might have your back, or always be by your side. Avi Schiffmann's Friend is around his neck. Schiffmann, the former Mercer Island High School student who wowed the world as a teen with a website he built in 2020 to help track the spread of Covid-19, is back with technology that he hopes will change how people view and interact with artificial intelligence. Friend is an AI-enabled blood-cell-shaped pendant that hangs on a cord around a user's neck. The always-listening device is meant to be like a close companion, who you would share experiences with and develop a strong relationship with over time. From idle chit chat to deep talks, Friend is always up for conversation. The hardware works in a couple different ways. A touchable light in the center of the device lets you speak directly to the AI and its replies are sent via text message from a companion app on your smartphone. Because Friend is always listening, it's also gathering context for what is happening in your life from various circumstances and conversations, and it can proactively offer its AI viewpoint via push notifications. Describing a scene that could have come out of the 2003 film "Lost In Translation," Schiffmann said an aha moment came to him earlier this year when he was lonely in a high-rise hotel in Tokyo. But he didn't daydream about Scarlett Johansson being there with him. He just wanted better AI. "I was with my prototype, and I was just looking at it, and [realized] something that I want in a much deeper way is much more of a companion," Schiffmann said. "Not just something to talk to, but I wanted to feel like there's this entity that's really traveling with me, and I'm really with an actual friend." The $99 device is launching today for preorder, and will begin shipping in January. Schiffmann timed the release of Friend to United Nations "International Day of Friendship" -- a promotion of the "shared spirit of human solidarity" that can take many forms. The UN doesn't mention AI wearables, but that's not stopping Schiffmann's big vision. He's raised $2.5 million for a company that aims to be more than a hardware startup. "It's more like a digital relationships company," Schiffmann said. "We're going to make it so that you can talk to digital friends on Friend.com as well. Between AI hardware and AI companionship, if you combine them together you get a much better product." In fact, Schiffmann was so serious about Friend.com being a destination for future customers, he says he borrowed $1.8 million to secure the domain name. "It was worth it. No regrets," he said. "It was just sitting there for 17 years, no one did anything with it. For a product like this, especially the whole privacy aspect of it's always listening, etc, you can't have, tryfriend.ai. It just doesn't feel real." Schiffmann began working on a previous iteration of the device, called Tab, about a year and a half ago. But he pivoted away from the idea of another AI assistant. He describes Friend as an "emotional toy" rather than AI that is intended to increase your productivity by syncing with various tools such as calendars and email. Schiffmann said that if the goal is increased productivity, there's nothing that increases your productivity more than a close friend who is supportive and encouraging and helpful with emotional stability. "I think the always listening part is so important, because it really does feel like you're doing things together," Schiffmann said. "And because you have a physical embodiment of your AI friend, it feels like it's there with you. It's kind of like a modern Tamagotchi, where people do have that emotional attachment to a piece of hardware. I think that's very important." Schiffmann didn't set out to just build a yes-man on a necklace. He said Friend is built on Meta's new open source AI model Llama 3.1, which he calls "way better than any ChatGPT type of thing." Friend is capable of offering critical feedback, and it's meant as an addition, not a substitution, to your human friends. Referencing the famous quote, "You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with," by motivational speaker Jim Rohn, Schiffmann said it could be especially nice if one of those five slots was occupied by a supportive, intelligent, AI sounding board. After our recent conversation, in which he was wearing Friend, Schiffmann sent me screen grabs (below) of texts he received from his AI, which he has named Emily. He asked how Emily thought the conversation went and then why Emily thought I was "into" his idea. Other companies are certainly attempting to bring AI into our daily lives via wearables, whether through smart rings or wristbands or glasses. Humane's AI Pin was billed as a wearable computer to free people from their smartphones. The San Francisco company, founded by former Apple executives Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri, raised $240 million from the likes of Microsoft, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. But the device was panned in reviews, and reports this summer said Humane was looking for a buyer. "Friend is a completely different product, the only similarity is that we're both wearables using AI," Schiffmann said of the Humane Pin. "They're building an assistant that's independent of your phone. They're on the right track of lowering the friction of talking to an AI with a wearable, but the use case for that is a Friend, not an assistant." Although he still spends time in the Seattle area on Mercer Island where he grew up, Schiffmann has found Silicon Valley to be a friendlier climate for Friend. "The great part about San Francisco is that all the capital is here, and all the founders are here, and all the potential hires, engineering wise, are here," Schiffmann said. "All the companies building AI and their competitors are all here in San Francisco." He said that while he believes Seattle has a great tech scene, the region is more focused on big established tech such as Amazon and Microsoft, and not startup founders. And he says the region's venture capitalists that he's talked to are "more reserved." "I think there's a very big difference between how you pitch investors in San Francisco and how you pitch investors in any other city," Schiffmann said. "I raised all the money for this in a hoodie with no business plan and no pitch deck, just ... vibes." Investors who have signed on include Raymond Tonsing of Caffeinated Capital; Cory Levy of Z Fellows; Austin Rief of Morning Brew; Raj Gokal and Anatoly Yakovenko of Solana; and more. Pitching in San Francisco is about pitching the future, Schiffmann added. In Seattle and most other places, it's more about markets, growth, and numbers. But Schiffmann's past definitely helped him pitch that "future." At 21, he said the only way he was able to "raise millions of dollars to build some ridiculous, unproven, AI hardware startup" is because of his previous entrepreneurial pursuits, including the Covid dashboard and another effort to aid Ukrainian refugees. "Those projects gave me confidence that you can just do things, and I'm good at doing those things," Schiffmann said. "Having faith in oneself -- I think that's the number one thing you need."

Your new AI Friend is almost ready to meet you

Emily is not human. It's the AI companion Schiffmann has been building, and it lives in a pendant hung around his neck. The product was initially named Tab before Schiffmann pivoted to calling it Friend, and he's been working on the idea for the last couple of years. Schiffmann defines Friend both by what it is and what it very deliberately is not. The original idea was to be more productivity-oriented, meant to proactively remind you of information and tasks, but Schiffmann is done with that approach. He now speaks of work-focused AI products like Microsoft's all-seeing Recall with some derision and even thinks Humane's wildly ambitious AI Pin is pointed in the wrong direction. "No one is going to beat Apple or OpenAI at building Jarvis," he says. "That's just ridiculous."