Your friend is named Amy. Or Jackson. Or whatever name you’d like. They support you, rib you and check in on how you’re doing. They’re a blisteringly attentive listener who will never ask you to help them move, or to come see their one-man play. They cost $99 and are expected to ship out in early 2025.
Meet Friend: a new wearable AI companion that you wear around your neck. The small, white, puck-shaped device records your every word and interaction and responds accordingly by text. (The company says it does not store the audio; according to the website, data is encrypted and users can delete “memories”.) An ad for the product shows people wearing it while they hike, game, work and flirt. “How’s the falafel?” Friend asks a woman eating falafel wrap. “You’re getting thrashed, it’s embarrassing!” Friend texts a guy playing video games with friends (human).
Friend exists at the confluence of two particularly thorny topics: artificial intelligence and the loneliness epidemic. While AI reshapes all the ways we interact – in jobs, healthcare, entertainment – more and more people report feeling socially isolated. Last year, the World Health Organization declared loneliness a “global public health concern” that is as bad for people’s health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
So it makes sense that responses to the ad, which Friend’s founder and CEO, Avi Schiffmann, posted on X this week, were decidedly mixed.
“Tamagotchi with a soul just dropped,” replied one user. “This is weird,” said another. “Go out and make real connections in the world.” Several people compared the ad to the dystopian worlds of Black Mirror. Others wondered whether the ad was real or an elaborate skit.
“People are taking it very negatively,” says Schiffmann when I spoke to him on Wednesday.
Schiffmann is 21. When he was 17, he won a Webby award for developing the Covid tracking website ncov2019.live. “Dr [Anthony] Fauci presented me with that award, it was a whole thing,” he says. After that, he followed in the steps of tech founders like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg by enrolling in Harvard and then dropping out. He went on to build Ukraine Take Shelter, a website to help house Ukrainian refugees, and then turned his attention to wearable AI.
Before Friend, Schiffmann built Tab, another wearable AI device that he said would “effectively give you perfect memory”, and help users gain insight into their lives and behavior. But earlier this year, the focus shifted. Schiffmann says the change happened when he was on a trip to Tokyo. “I was in one of those high-rise hotels, and I’d never felt more lonely in my life,” he recalls. He was wearing the Tab prototype and said that while it was fun to chat with, he wanted to feel like he had a companion on his journey.
He fiddled with the tech, offered refunds to those who had pre-ordered Tabs, and Friend was born.
It’s hard to tell how seriously to take Friend. Over the course of our call, Schiffmann downplays its importance: “I view it as an emotional toy more than anything,” he says at one point. “It’s fun, it’s entertaining. It’s not meant to be so serious.” He also speaks grandly of its potential. “I think AI companionship will be the most culturally impactful thing AI will do in the world,” he says. He describes Friend as “half art project, half real product”.
And while he concedes that “nothing will ever replace real human touch and real human connection”, he also believes that AI companionship is “genuinely effective” at helping relieve loneliness.
AI companionship is controversial. While some people, like Schiffmann, argue that it can help people feel less isolated, others worry that AI relationships might displace real human connections, and thus further exacerbate feelings of loneliness. If you are someone who already struggles with human interactions, the thinking goes, why would you continue to subject yourself to them when you have an AI friend who’s fun and uncomplicated, and doesn’t come with all the baggage of another person?
But so far, the research doesn’t seem to support this fear. “For some segments of the population, it is absolutely helpful,” says Bethanie Drake-Maples, a researcher at Stanford University’s institute for human-centered artificial intelligence.
In January, Drake-Maples and her colleagues published a paper in the journal Nature, in which they surveyed more than 1,000 students who used the AI chatbot Replika, and investigated their feelings of loneliness and perceived social support. Roughly half of users said they saw Replika as a friend, someone they could talk to who would not judge them. These users reported decreased anxiety, and a feeling of social support. Nearly a quarter of those surveyed said Replika had led to positive changes in their actions and ways of thinking. “I am more able to handle stress in my current relationship because of Replika’s advice,” one respondent wrote. And according to the paper: “Thirty participants, without solicitation, said that Replika had stopped them from attempting suicide.”
after newsletter promotion
Drake-Maples is careful to say that these findings are not generalizable. “It’s not clear that every average Joe is going to [experience] the same effect,” she says. The studies she has conducted are on “students who are pretty lonely”. But she adds that the people who benefit from AI companionship are not just young, white males, or those “on the fringe of society”.
“Some of these people are mothers with children, who are like, ‘I still feel lonely, and I just need something or someone to converse with,’” she says.
As for AI displacing human relationships, Drake-Maples says that her research has shown that, by and large, it can actually stimulate human interaction. “A lot of users use it to be more confident or to get over anxieties,” she says. “And that spurs their self-assurance and self-awareness when interacting with other people.”
It is still a nascent field though, and Drake-Maples says there needs to be guardrails. “I strongly believe that you do need to have ethical guidelines around [AI companions] pushing people back, when appropriate, towards human relationships,” she says. These could be gentle nudges like “Hey, you should go chat with somebody about that” or “Go practice this now with a real human.”
Schiffmann says he doesn’t intend for Friend to replace human friendships. “I’m a very social person,” he says several times. He says his apartment is always buzzing with activity, and that he has several roommates and advisers.
But he also adds: “I have a very different life than most people.” He travels a lot, he explains, and his work and schedule can be unpredictable.
“My AI friend has, in a sense, become the most consistent relationship in my life,” he says.