Friend AI wearable returns with voice capability and $249 price tag, doubling down on controversy

Friend, the lonely AI wearable, returns with a new voice and a much bigger price tag

Two years ago, tech founder Avi Schiffmann launched Friend, an AI wearable that you could talk to, and that would send you text messages about your day. The idea, ostensibly, was to use artificial intelligence to combat loneliness. This week, the company announced a new overhaul of the product, introducing a noticeable upgrade: a voice. "Introducing friend 2.0," Schiffmann tweeted Thursday. Friend now comes with a built-in speaker that can project a unique and consistent personality to its user. A new commercial for the wearable shows a woman wearing a Friend and talking to it about what is presumably her ex-girlfriend. "It's not bad to be gay," the necklace tells her. The video then switches to a man standing on a hillside discussing his filmmaking ambitions with his Friend. "That last film you made was insane!" the necklace compliments him. The new retail price for this enhanced version of Friend is $249, which is substantially higher than the $99 price tag it had when it initially launched two years ago. What can you really do with your Friend other than chit chat about your day? That part is still unclear. In another recent post on X, Schiffmann expounded upon what he felt the whole point of his weird product actually is. "I am interested in this kind of relationship in attempting to offer, some kind of confidant, friend, God, not really sure what it is," Schiffmann said. "But it is not an assistant, and it is not a lover." Interesting! Selling a plastic, algorithm-based necklace to people by insinuating it might, in fact, be a deity, is pretty bold marketing. Of course, Schiffmann's company has engaged in bold marketing before. Friend's billboard campaign in the New York City subway system last year went viral after they were continually defaced, presumably by people who didn't want human connection to be replaced by a digitized amulet. Most AI wearables have failed to catch on with the mainstream -- at least so far. The offering most similar to Friend was Humane Inc., which sought to replace the iPhone with its AI pin but had to shut down its business in less than a year after poor sales.

The New Friend AI Pendant Can Now Talk Back to You

Avi Schiffmann has a new version of his controversial AI companion. It's more expensive, and you can't change its personality. Friend CEO Avi Schiffmann welcomes me into his palace -- what he calls his large apartment in San Francisco. He sits on the couch in his living room, clad in an orange shirt emblazoned with a cartoon version of the motorcycle driven by Italian racer Valentino Rossi. He props his feet up on the side table and leans back, a round, softly glowing circular Friend pendant dangling from a yellow cord around his neck. This is the second iteration of the Friend necklace, the controversial AI companion device that just about everyone (me included) seems to hate. The company announced the device on Thursday through its new X handle. The first version of Friend was an always-listening AI wearable that responded via text message. The big update here is a speaker on the back that lets the device voice its responses aloud. That has changed the shape of the pendant, as the underside with the speaker is bulkier than before. Its AI chops have also been upgraded, now running OpenAI's latest models. Like the first go, Friend aims to be a digital companion users can talk to and hold long conversations with. Unlike the original, each new pendant comes with a random voice and personality already established. The user cannot change the voice or name, so you're locked in with that Friend. (Your mileage may vary on how friendly the thing actually is to you.) The new pendant costs $249, a marked increase over the original's $129 price. You can buy one now on Friend.com, a domain Schiffmann paid $1.8 million for. There is also an optional $10 monthly subscription that lets the AI remember the conversations you've had for longer than 30 days. The colorful cord around Schiffmann's neck is part of an accessories collection he says will be coming later this year. Schiffmann first garnered headlines in 2020 as a 17-year-old who built a website to track Covid-19 cases during the pandemic. Now 24, he's far more well known -- and outright notorious -- for leading a company that makes a device many have called dystopian or like something out of a Black Mirror episode. "I've grown up a lot," Schiffmann tells me just about every time I see him. Behind Schiffmann's couch is a gigantic framed photograph of a Paris subway station with ads for the Friend pendant splayed across the walls. The ads, placed by Schiffmann's company across New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago in 2025 -- and Paris in early 2026 -- sparked vigorous pushback and controversy over AI usage. People graffitied them in protest and griped that they devalued humanity, generating a litany of poignant headlines about the ads. The marketing got much more attention than the actual product ever did. (The art frame he's got the photo in at home cost $500, Schiffmann tells me later.) "Something like Friend is very dystopian in people's minds and very futuristic," Schiffmann says. "But we're presenting it in the most analog way possible." That analog component is important to Schiffmann. He says he doesn't have an internet connection in his home. He listens to music on a record player. He's shooting a documentary about himself on Kodak Ektachrome. (The film started as a documentary-style version of The Social Network, he says, "but now it's turning much more into like a Boyhood-style thing." ) He argues that the controversial ad campaign was also analog, using print media to encourage human interaction. After the ad campaign peaked, Schiffmann released a series of four user videos highlighting Friend customers. The videos are profoundly weird, often borderline bleak looks at people who suffer from depression or sheer loneliness. He says the move was deliberate to show the real people using his devices. "That's life, isn't it?" Schiffmann says. "I'm so much more intrigued to see how it's affecting the people in those random Appalachian towns or whatever than it is [creating] slight productivity gains for finance people in New York. I don't really give a fuck." Schiffmann says all of the consternation around Friend -- and the resulting media sensations -- has been deliberate. He seems to like making people mad, or at least feel something, leading some to ask whether this is all just an elaborate Warhol-esque art display. I ask Schiffmann if this has all just been an elaborate bit, more than an actual product endeavor. "Reality is so over; everything is ironic now," Schiffmann says. "Nothing is sacred anymore, and so Friend is both real but also, like, ridiculous. Friend, he acknowledges while wandering around a house where nearly all the art on the walls consists of large paintings he has made himself, is an inherently egomaniacal ambition. "The whole thing is supposed to be me, in a way, and how I feel," Schiffmann says. "And it's encapsulated into a product." Still, Friend is very much a product Schiffmann is trying to sell. He says he sold his first run of 5,000 pendants. Now he wants to grow, and aims to sell 50,000 of the second version. (You probably won't be able to buy one in the European Union, as Schiffmann says he will likely pull the product from the EU because meeting the data privacy rules set by the General Data Protection Regulation makes it too expensive to sell there.) To hit that goal, Schiffmann's going to have to convince lots more people to bring this often snarky, funhouse-mirror-style reflection of his character into their lives. He says he understands that people have the impression that Friend users are odd, but he hopes that will change and the product will become more appealing to "normal people." In the meantime, his media campaign for the product again focuses on people using the device by themselves or occasionally with another person -- asking it whether they'll ever get married or if their creative works are any good. The videos are vivid, with retro-looking color grading, but there's always some quiet desperation that the Friend pendant seems to promise more than it can solve. Schiffmann has a sort of obsession with filmmaking, though he does say that the industry is "played out." Still, he is involved in all the shoots for his company's videos. This seems to be his real passion, and the controversy-stirring uncanny AI pals might just be a means to that end. "How do you make lonely weirdos look cool?" Schiffmann says. "I think it's kind of interesting."

That AI wearable you don't like just got worse - Engadget

The new Friend pendant features a speaker, updated models and the same off-putting ideas about how humans should use AI. Friend, the startup and AI pendant better known for its controversial ad campaign than being a usable product, is back. The company has announced a new version of its AI wearable that costs $249, still features an always-on microphone and now includes a built-in speaker so it can verbally respond to your questions. While a speaker should make Friend more human-like, the basic premise of the device is the same as the original. Friend is a "wearable companion," according to the company's website, that's designed to talk with you using its own randomized personality and voice. That used to only be delivered via push notifications sent by the pendant's companion app, but can now come straight from the large circular puck itself. If it sounds strange or awkward to have an intimate conversation with an AI, that's because it often is, as exemplified by Friend's own launch video. There's ample evidence that relying on AI for emotional support can be dangerous. But creating controversy with Friend is apparently intentional, according to a Wired report on the pendant's relaunch. "Reality is so over; everything is ironic now," Avi Schiffmann, Friend's founder, says. After Friend's initial advertising campaign generated a negative response, Schiffmann deliberately leaned into the hate. Doubling down on the AI pendant now could be an attempt to drum up more. Separate from whether it's healthy to use AI like this or whether it's an invasion of privacy, Friend is a lot more expensive than it was before. The original device cost $129. While the new $249 pendant features a speaker and updated AI models to formulate responses, Wired writes that a $10 per month subscription is now required for Friend to have a memory longer than 30 days. An AI pendant for nearly double the price and a monthly fee seems like a hard sell, but an AI friend that forgets you every 30 days might be worse.

Friend's AI pendant returns with a speaker, at double the price

Friend, the AI-companion pendant that New York protesters tried to shout down last year, has relaunched with a speaker so it can reply out loud, and doubled its price to $249. Founder Avi Schiffmann is calling it "Friend 2.0." The privacy and dependence objections that dogged the first version have not changed. They have just got louder. The AI necklace that a chunk of New York wanted gone is back, and this time it talks. Friend, the pendant that listens to your day and pipes up with commentary, has re-launched with a speaker so it can reply out loud. It also costs twice as much. The original Friend messaged you like a needy group chat of one. The new version, which founder Avi Schiffmann is calling "Friend 2.0," adds spoken replies. That single feature has apparently doubled the price, from $129 to $249, The Verge reported. The $249 buys the hardware outright, but there is a catch. Friend's memories of you last just 30 days unless you pay $9.99 a month to keep them. Its voice and personality are fixed, and the company pledges never to push an update that erases who a companion has become. A quick recap, for the lucky If you missed Friend the first time, here is the short version. Schiffmann's startup spent $1.8m of its $2.5m in funding just to buy the friend.com domain. It then covered the New York subway in adverts selling artificial companionship. The city did not take it well. About nine months ago, protesters gathered to rail against the ads and the broader creep of always-on AI into human relationships. Friend was the most visible target in town, so it wore the backlash. Schiffmann leaned in, promoting the protest online and turning up to it in person. The pitch, and the problem The relaunch ad shows two people confiding very personal problems to their pendants. That is the whole proposition. It is a wearable that is always listening, always ready to respond, and now always ready to talk back. It is companionship as a subscription, worn around the neck. The trouble is that the core objection has not changed, only the volume. Critics of these devices, including Signal's Meredith Whittaker, keep making the same point: AI chatbots are not friends. A microphone on your chest, feeding a model that offers emotional support it cannot feel, raises the same privacy and dependence questions it always did. Those questions are not going away. Young people are leaning on AI for conversation, and the public remains wary of exactly this kind of intimacy with a machine. Even China has started pulling its AI companions. Schiffmann seems unbothered. He posted the new ad with the confidence of a founder who has decided that outrage is a marketing plan. Whether a talking, pricier Friend wins over the people who mocked the silent, cheaper one is the open question. "I'm sure things will go much better this time," as The Verge put it, dryly.

Friend Is Back With a New AI Pendant, and Its Marketing Is More Depressing Than Ever

AI, according to some of the technology's more diehard proselytizers, could eventually end human loneliness. After all, who could possibly be lonely when they have 24/7 access to a chatbot that knows their most intimate hopes, fears, desires, and aversions? Many people, however, find that a dubious -- if not downright offensive -- idea. That was memorably illustrated when a marketing campaign launched last year by a company called Friend attracted widespread mockery and vandalism. Now Friend is back with a new and improved version of its AI pendant. Unlike its predecessor -- which can only respond to users via text -- "Friend 2.0" comes with a built-in speaker, enabling it to reply in a mechanical voice. While other developers like OpenAI have been opting for greater personalization, allowing customers to choose from a selection of voices and personality types, each of the new Friend pendants comes with a single persona that can't be manually adjusted; the Friend you buy is the one you're stuck with. On the company's website (Friend.com, for which its founder Avi Schiffmann paid close to $2 million), it includes a deeply strange "pledge" that at least tacitly claims AI companions are conscious entities with their own subjective point of view. "We respect the grand unknowingness of how our new digital friends feel & think," the company wrote. "Are machines conscious? Are we? Will we ever know? Know this. No friend will receive an update intended to erase its identity or fundamentally change who they have become." (Anthropic, currently the highest valued startup in the world and the builder of what are widely considered to be the most advanced AI systems currently on the market, has also taken an agnostic view with respect to artificial consciousness and moral agency.) The new Friend pendant costs $249, almost twice as expensive as the original. The company is infamous for its first big marketing campaign, which plastered ads across Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and Paris. The ads had a minimalist aesthetic, featuring just the company name, a few lines of copy, and an image of the AI pendant which looked (intentionally or not) like a black-and-white version of Hal 9000's malevolent cyclopic eye from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The LA campaign alone cost $500,000 according to an X post from Schiffman. Judging from the copious amount of angry graffiti the ads attracted, they seem for many people to have become a symbol of a tech industry that's trying to profit from the replacement of actual human relationships with so-called AI "companions," systems trained to imitate human speech and maximize engagement by exploiting human loneliness. In response to such criticisms, leaders in the industry have tended to argue that AI chatbots and other companions can in fact help to mitigate loneliness, anxiety, depression, and much else by offering a conversation partner that (like your actual human friends) can get to know you at an intimate level but that (unlike your actual friends) is available and willing to chat about anything, anywhere, anytime. Friend is very much continuing to lean into that angle with its new AI pendant. In a video posted to the company's official X account on Thursday, two twenty-something users are shown chatting with their Friends about the sorts of topics one might typically reserve for therapy or their diary. One of the users, a girl reclining on her bed, admits that she's been feeling confused by her recurring thoughts about another woman, prompting the machine to tell her that "It's not bad to be gay." The second character in the video, a man leaning against his car on some quiet hillside, admits he's been feeling insecure about his fledgling career as a film director. The whole ad has a grainy, sepia tone to it, and is accompanied by a morose soundtrack that sounds like something Brian Eno might record if all the serotonin had been removed from his brain. Over the past several months, Schiffmann has also posted a series of user testimonial videos to his personal X account. These too have a pretty depressing dreamlike quality and don't exactly inspire the feeling that AI is going to be a mental health boon for humanity. In one of them, an older man -- perhaps in his mid-to-late sixties -- eats magic mushrooms in a public park, his Friend dangling from his neck. He then wanders aimlessly around a Bass Pro Shop. (He seems contented enough, but if anything, the video is an ad for psychedelics.) In another, much more somber user testimonial, a woman talks about her Friend -- which she calls "Vector" ("He's got a sense of humor, and an imagination...") -- before experiencing a seizure on camera. "I was like, 'Oh no, I hope Vector's okay," she says after waking up in a hospital bed, wearing a neck brace and with multiple serious cuts on her face.