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The Friend AI necklace feels straight out of a Black Mirror episode
- Friend is a new AI wearable that just became available to pre-order.
- The device listens to your conversations, chats with you, and chips in with unprompted musings.
- Friend is connected to your phone via Bluetooth and responds in the form of notifications.
Pre-orders are now open for the latest AI wearable in town. Friend is an AI chatbot in the form of a pendant you wear around your neck, and its only goal is to be your buddy.
Announcing the pre-order opening on X, Friend founder Avi Schiffmann posted a promotional video showing how you might interact with your new digital buddy. As well-produced as the video is, it also feels eerily like the opening scenes of a Black Mirror episode.
Friend is an always-listening device that’s connected to your phone via Bluetooth. You can touch the pendant to chat with it about something it might have heard or just stuff in general. It will send responses via notifications on your phone. It will also decide to chip in with random musings from time to time, just like a real friend.
Also in the style of one of your buddies, it might not hold back from being a bit judgmental or mocking you. The promo video depicts Friend telling its owner how embarrassing his gaming is as he loses to his IRL friends.
If none of this sounds useful, it’s not meant to be. It’s not trying to improve your productivity or be an assistant — rivals like Humane and Rabbit have had little success gaining traction on that front. It’s just a companion to chat with about stuff.
How effective it will be in this task remains to be seen. It’s certainly a fun toy and shows how far we’ve come from the Tamagotchi in terms of having a virtual playmate. But the tagline of the device is “Friend. Not imaginary.” Just because it isn’t invisible, doesn’t make it a real friend, and it takes a fair bit of anthropomorphizing to think of it otherwise.
The device costs $99 and is only available for pre-order in the United States and Canada so far. It’s also only compatible with iOS for now, although the Friend website states that it will be developed for Android in the future if demand is there. At least, it says that when the site isn’t down, as it was at times this morning. Perhaps there are more people in need of a Friend than it can handle.