Spike Jonze’s Her is the blueprint and its role in inspiring AI inventions is evident from the allegation of OpenAI using Samantha’s voice to the new Friend AI necklace. The movie wasn’t the first to portray the future potential of AI, but it was one of the first movies to convincingly show us how heavily reliant on technology we might become someday, just for some company. The real world isn’t quite as dystopian for the majority yet, but AI companies appear convinced that a wearable AI companion or assistant is just what we need.
Powered by Anthropic AI’s Claude 3.5 large language model, the Friend AI pendant is capable of listening to conversations and replying to text messages on your phone. Friend’s “not imaginary” tagline suggests you’ll find a real companion with their new wearable, but all we can see is a chatbot with additional hardware.
Image: The Friend AI pendant
The Friend AI Necklace—Carry Your Buddy Wherever You Go
Here to combat loneliness, the new Friend AI offers a round dial device that you can wear around your neck. The device does not have any voice capabilities but is instead linked to your smartphone. This means that all your communications with the device require you to pull your phone out to see what your new friend has to say.
Just as with the Rabbit R1 device and its user reviews of “this could have just been an app,” it almost feels like the Friend AI pendant could also have been a smartphone application that runs in the background. If you happen to watch the trailer, the messaging feels quite ominous and the music choice is unsettling, as confirmed by all the comments under the video. We love saying that everything futuristic is “like an episode of Black Mirror,” but the uncomfortable messaging of bringing a “friend” on a date and saying “I’ve never brought anyone else up here, besides her,” is a little odd.
introducing friend. not imaginary.
order now at https://t.co/7kGiH5pQVK pic.twitter.com/qU58xNvX5v
— Avi (@AviSchiffmann) July 30, 2024
Can the Friend AI truly combat loneliness as the product makers believe? Should we be exploring such an attachment to technology at all? These abstract questions are something for everyone to consider but not one that we can conclusively comment on. Speaking about the Friend AI necklace, creator Avi Schiffman says, “Friend is an expression of how lonely I’ve felt,” and maybe there is something in that sentiment that will resonate with the intended audience.
Image: The tone of the ad is a tad bit unsettling
Everyone Deserves a Friend Who Always Listens
What makes the Friend AI so special? Well, it’s “always listening” so you might like it more than a pal who doesn’t pick up your calls or one who’s distracted when you have something to say. The Friend pendant connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth and in the company’s own words, “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.”
That’s one way to turn a weakness into a strength. For every concern you’ve had about apps constantly monitoring all of your activities, you can soon buy a wearable AI companion that does it openly with intention. The company states that no audio or transcripts are “stored past your friend’s context window.”
Considering the device has no external backup or separate storage, losing or damaging the device means you lose the memories attached to it. There is no recovery plan so you’re obligated to treat your friend with care, which is almost a beautiful message. The data is end-to-end encrypted and you can delete memories through the friend app. Trusting these protocols is going to take some work.
How Does the Wearable AI Companion Work?
The Friend AI pendant can be worn around the neck just like the Limitless pendant, and once it is set up and connected to your phone via Bluetooth, the device begins to listen. From the trailer, it appears that tapping on the pendant prompts the AI to listen more actively to your question, following which it thinks for a moment and sends a response to your smartphone. The AI also has the freedom to reach out to you whenever it wants and contribute to your conversations and experiences with a message.
The wearable AI companion makes no claims of being an assistant or doing anything to help productivity. Overpromising has gotten AI wearables nowhere and the Friend AI necklace plans to keep things simple. The idea for the companion came to the creator amidst a frustrating period of creating an AI device specifically designed for productivity, so his reasoning does appear to be that the AI tool will provide a listening ear for those who find themselves similarly in need of a conversation.
Speaking to TechCrunch about the Friend AI gadget, Schiffman said, “I would really view the product as like an emotional toy. I think the only successful use case of large language models is people talking about their day and their feelings to tools like Replika or Character AI. But with hardware present, I believe it is a better emotional connect.”
The device is clearly not meant as a replacement for therapy for those who regularly get told to “seek help,” but it seems it is still expected to stand in for real human communication and sentiment. It is also worth noting that the trailer and blog don’t show us too much about just how complex the AI’s responses can get. So far, we’ve only seen simplistic, single-sentence responses from the AI but we can’t tell if it will really be able to help you with deeper conversations that truly lie at the heart of loneliness. We’d have to get our hands on the device once it is out to truly learn more.
The Reactions Are Pouring In Already
Popular reviewer Marques Brownlee should have one soon enough if his Twitter/X interaction with Schiffmann is any indication, and we’re curious to see if his reviews go any differently from the other failed AI products. “I think the vibe of the video combined with the idea of the product itself like a well-done parody of existing standalone AI devices,” he said in response to a user who questioned why he thought the trailer was a skit. We couldn’t agree more.
https://t.co/nhnQ4GMTvD is the worst domain I could think of for a companion-type AI consumer product.
Cringe. Cheesy.
Signals loneliness, isolation, insecurity.“Hey guys, I bought myself a friend” – wants to say no one, ever.
— Mitya Smusin (@mityasmusin) July 31, 2024
Once again a total miss. I don’t need a friend or companion, I wish only to carry my ai nemesis around my neck, imprisoned in a gem, witnessing my life, my joy, as a mockery of his death, his anguish
— Steve Ruiz (@steveruizok) July 30, 2024
Silicon Valley is all raged up to first make you more lonely buy making you hooked to virtual world that actually doesn’t exist to an extent that real world seems too REAL, and then to sell you such nonsense product to fulfil the need of “companionship.”https://t.co/xyQWEymmFF
— Anubha Pandey (@in_finiteee) July 31, 2024
“Funnel your loneliness into a GPT wrapper to obtain meaningless platitudes on demand from your “friend” / AI surveillance pendant. The future is a bit depressing innit,” Twitter/X user DrNickA said in response to the post.
Some of the responses on Twitter/X do appear positive and they appear to be actively considering the device as a gadget worth a purchase. We’re excited to see how many of these turn into actual orders.
Everyone is going to be SO snarky about ‘Friend’ AI companion.
However, research just corroborated the notion AI companions can reduce loneliness via @emollick
Paper: https://t.co/3V7Xf26Gz5 https://t.co/1buH0X2MJf pic.twitter.com/lwxsYGHpiM
— Louis Anslow (@LouisAnslow) July 30, 2024
What’s also interesting is that the Friend AI pendant doesn’t appear to be the first Friend AI pendant designed, which has sparked a conversation about how original any of this tech really is. There happens to be an open-source Friend AI wearable on the market designed by Based Hardware, so we’re not entirely sure how it ties into the IP of the new device. The Twitter/X feud between the founders has added some drama to the ultimate pursuit of friendship.
Today I saw the launch of another “open-source” AI wearable that has not published anything just to charge you 5x the cost
At @MistralAI x @cerebral_valley hackathon in @SHACK15sf we built FRIEND – an AI Wearable that:
– Works 24+ hours on a single charge
– Costs ~$20
-… pic.twitter.com/IOHa9601w1— Nik Shevchenko (@kodjima33) March 24, 2024
Does the AI Necklace Come at a High Price?
If you live in the U.S. or Canada, for only $99 USD, you can currently pre-order your Friend AI necklace on the company website. There are no additional subscription plans like the Humane AI Pin tried to sell, so the purchase is a one-time deal. The device will begin shipping in “Q1 2025 on a first come first serve basis,” so the Friend AI necklace won’t be arriving any time soon, but it gives the company a good period to estimate the demand for the product and get to production accordingly.
The wearable AI companion is also only compatible with iOS smartphones, which is a highly unusual choice for a product that is already expected to have a niche user base. Support for Android will only become a focus if there is sufficient demand for the pendant.
The device is set to be available in different colors and sports a 15-hour battery life, and according to Wired’s interview with Schiffman, it is a result of the company’s partnership with Bould, an industrial design studio. Schiffman reportedly spent $1.8 million USD to secure the domain name so it is quite evident that a lot of money has already been spent on marketing the device just right. Will it be able to recover the costs of the gadget or will it follow a similar fate like its wearable AI competitors?