Are you feeling lonely enough to buy a ‘constant companion’ that will listen to all your conversations and then text you snarky messages about them?
A necklace called ‘Friend’ promises to do just that, with its microphone always on unless you disable it manually.
It’s the subject of a massive ad campaign on the New York City underground, but it’s fair to say not everyone is feeling friendly.
‘Get a real friend,’ reads graffiti scrawled on one of the billboards, judging the device to be an example of ‘surveillance capitalism’.
Others took a pen to the ads to accuse it of ‘profiting off loneliness’, calling it ‘AI trash’.
To speak to it directly, just tap it and speak, and the chatbot powed by Google’s Gemini 2.5 will respond.
For now, you can only buy it in the US and Canada, for $129. You can bet this, or something similar, will make its way here soon though.
Avi Schiffman, CEO of the startup which makes it, told Adweek he had spent over a million dollars on the ad campaign with a thousand platform posters.
‘I don’t have much money left,’ he said, boasting that it was the ‘world’s first major AI campaign’, which may well be true in terms of print billboards on the underground.
The necklace won’t speak to you out loud, but will send text messages to your phone in real time about what’s going on.
Would you wear a necklace like this?
A video advertising it shows it encouraging someone ‘at least we got outside!’ when they doubt themselves on a hike, joking that the food was tasty after sauce spilled onto it in real life, and telling a gamer that their play was so bad it was ’embarassing’ when they were losing to a friend.
The final shot is of a woman connecting with someone in real life, reaching for the neckace but ultimately dropping her hand.
It’s hard to be moved much by her choosing human connection in this instance, however, as the necklace is presumably still listening to everything they say.
Friend says it doesn’t store audio or transcripts of conversations, data is end-to-end encrypted, and memories can be deleted in one click.
But the data is pushed to the cloud for processing, and there are clear privacy concerns.
Even if you personally are fine with being eavesdropped on all day – and it is legal where you are – others you encounter may not be as delighted.
It might even be illegal to use in some domains.
The small print of ‘Friend’ warns: ‘By using the Services, you understand that the Device is passively recording your surroundings, including video and audio content that may contain personal information that is inappropriate, illegal, or unethical to collect.
‘You are solely responsible for ensuring that you comply with all applicable laws when you use our products or Services.’
Earlier this year, Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok launched a voice mode that would have phone sex with users, and people are already claiming to be married to bots.
It seems that AI relationships are here to stay, even if this particular ‘friend’ship fades.
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