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An up-and-coming artificial intelligence (AI) startup has taken a different approach to building AI-powered wearables, focusing on providing companionship to consumers rather than productivity.
This innovation comes from 21-year-old tech expert Avi Schiffmann, who emerged in the spotlight after creating the first website for tracking COVID-19 cases worldwide in 2020. Schiffman has now pursued a career in the AI industry since being a volunteer, and Friend is his latest brainchild.
At its core, Friend is an AI chatbot inside a pendant that can either be worn as a necklace or clipped onto clothes. It has a built-in microphone that records the surrounding audio and lets users communicate.
Schiffman has branded the device as an always-listening pendant, but it does not talk back. Instead, it sends text messages and pushes notifications via the Friend app on the phone to which it is connected.
Friend uses Anthropic AI’s Claude 3.5 large language model (LLM) with 15 hours of battery life. Designed in collaboration with Bould, the first 30,000 pieces have been put on sale for preorder at Friend.com at $99 apiece and will be shipped starting January 2025. So far, the pendant has no ongoing subscription fee.
Not about tasks but companionship
The original idea for Friend was a productivity-oriented device called Tab that would monitor work and personal tasks. However, Schiffman encountered numerous difficulties in developing an AI that could do everything at once.
On a lonely trip in Tokyo, he found himself talking to his AI prototype and felt the desire to build something that could keep him company. “I was looking at the Tab prototype, and I was like, it’s not that I just want to talk to this thing. I want it to feel like this companion is actually there with me traveling.”
Since then, his work has diverted attention away from work-focused AI products, such as Humane AI pin and Rabbit R1, which both failed to deliver on their promises. Schiffman is now zeroing in on creating digital friendships, theorizing that Friend is not about tasks but companionship.
He is also claiming that his always-listening device is an upgrade from similar products that are winning in the LLM space. Character AI and Replika are two popular AI bots that seek to forge meaningful relationships with people, but they are typically session-based and resemble a pen pal more than a companion.
Friend, meanwhile, is portable and can be used everywhere. Users also need not open their phones and type questions to find someone to talk to. Schiffman is hopeful that the product can spark an even deeper relationship, with its domain Friend.com transforming into a social network for real-life and AI friends.
The inventor also highlights that his work is all about improving the companionship offered by Friend. “I don’t care what medium or what tech we use or anything like that. It’s a digital relationships company. That’s it.”
Cannot replace human connection
Schiffman has assured users that no transcripts and audio are stored in the device and that it does not serve as a replacement for human connections.
“I don’t think this should be the only person you should talk to,” he explained. However, in the future, he expects that AI will be at least one of the five friends people will spend time with.
University of Oslo Professor Petter Bae Brandtzæg believes that friendships with AI devices, though different from real-life relationships, can lead to deeper and more intimate interactions, especially on topics that humans are not comfortable discussing with one another.
On the other hand, Jodi Halpern, a UC Berkeley professor, thinks that friendly AI technologies are only short-term solutions and that they might diminish people’s willingness to explore new human relationships in the long term.
Going forward
Presently, Friend remains a prototype, and Schiffman is in the process of promoting the device by speaking with tech media sites, including The Verge and WIRED, to achieve more credibility and attract manufacturers.
In addition, he plans to add more capabilities to Friend. Besides the microphone, a camera can also be expected soon. Schiffman is still contemplating how human-posturing the AI should be, whether it should feature a background story or begin doing things unprompted.
