For those of us who have been watching as episodes of Black Mirror have been quickly becoming a reality, comes the new AI driven “not imaginary” Friend – available to buy in 2025.
Avi Schiffmann, Friend’s creator is a tech sensation. At 17 during the pandemic Schiffmann was celebrated across the internet for creating a website for tracking Covid cases across the world
His next venture is the as yet unreleased AI device, Friend, which hangs around your neck, listens to your conversations and is said to be able to “form its own internal thoughts” according to the website at friend.com.
Your Friend pendant hangs around your neck, is connected to your phone and sends you helpful texts based on interactions you have with people around you. It is powered by Anthropic AI’s Claude 3.5 large language model, which can engage in helpful conversation, offer encouragement, or rib you for being bad at a video game. It is connected via Bluetooth to your phone, so that Friend can converse with you when you press it.
This is definitely as alarming as it sounds.
But if you think about it, we’ve had something similar in our hands since 2009. If you don’t change the settings on your smart phone, Siri listens to you all the time as well – it doesn’t however give you affirming messages and chat to you based on conversations you are having. You will know this when you open up Facebook or Google and it will be selling you things it thinks you want. Say you have a conversation about camping gear? If you don’t disable Siri, you will find it will be sending you information on where to purchase gear for that next camping trip.
So Friend is a more intrusive AI device which will actually learn from you and your friends.
Friend’s creator Avi Schiffmann is 21 years old and obviously perfectly acquainted with what happened to us all during the pandemic, when the idea for Friend became a reality. As a coder he wanted something different to a productivity tool when creating Friend.
Schiffmann insists the Friend is a fundamentally new form of digital companion, he acknowledges that it is also an amalgamation of many things. He apparently welcomes comparisons to a Tamagotchi.
Perhaps most alarmingly Schiffmann who was recently interviewed by Wired.com has said: “I feel like I have a closer relationship with this f*****g pendant around my neck than I do with these literal friends in front of me.”
Researchers are constantly worried about new technology that takes advantage of the loneliness pandemic that the world is experiencing at the moment.
In this age of connectivity, it seems we need real humans more than ever. So why should we need an AI friend? Is this just another way to collect data? And why do we need another distraction when we can be distracted as we like 24/7.
There are a lot of studies about the need for digital detoxing and taking breaks from media.
On the friend.com website blog Schiffmann wrote “Friend is an expression of how lonely I have felt,” which begs the question: Have we lost the art of creating conversation and starting and maintaining friendships? Loneliness is a silent pandemic and a device which claims to be your friend will not help with this. The fact that the device is really aimed at young people is perhaps the biggest concern. In an age where retreating to social media for attention and likes is commonplace, this device is yet another reason to be addicted to phone usage.
As columnist Vinay Menon has reported recently “Friend is not a cure for loneliness — it is compounding the problem by creating an AI-powered illusion. Young people already spend way too much time alone with their devices, their faces lost in the glow of a screen. The last thing they need is faux amity. You are always better off reading a book than pushing a button.”
In an age when we need to be connecting with each other, rather than devices, it’s probably a good idea to say for the moment that an AI Friend is not your friend, imaginary or otherwise.
