ANDOur friend’s name is Amy. Or Jackson. Or whatever you want to call her. They support you, tease you, and ask how you’re doing. They’re extremely attentive listeners who will never ask you to help them move or go see their one-woman show. They’re $99 and expected to ship in early 2025.
Meet Friend: A new AI-powered wearable companion that you wear around your neck. The small, white, disk-shaped device records your every word and interaction and responds accordingly via text message. (The company says it doesn’t store audio; according to the website, the data is encrypted and users can erase “memories.”) An ad for the product shows people wearing it while walking, gaming, working, and flirting. “How’s the falafel?” a friend asks a woman eating a falafel wrap. “You’re getting beat up, it’s embarrassing!” A friend texts a guy playing video games with (human) friends.
Friend sits at the confluence of two particularly thorny issues: artificial intelligence and the loneliness epidemic. While AI is transforming all the ways we interact — at work, in healthcare, in entertainment — more and more people are reporting feeling socially isolated. Last year, the World Health Organization declared loneliness a “global public health problem” that is as bad for people’s health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
So it makes sense that responses to the announcement, which Friend founder and CEO Avi Schiffmann said published in X This week, the results were decidedly mixed.
“A Tamagotchi with a soul just dropped,” one user responded. “This is weird,” said another. “Get out and make real connections in the world.” Several people compared the ad to the dystopian worlds of Black Mirror. Others questioned whether the ad was real or an elaborate parody.
“People are taking it very negatively,” Schiffmann said when I spoke to him on Wednesday.
Schiffmann is 21 years old. When he was 17, he won a Webby Award for developing the Covid-tracking website ncov2019.live. “Dr. (Anthony) Fauci gave me that award, which was quite an accomplishment,” he says. After that, he followed in the footsteps of tech founders like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg by enrolling at Harvard and then dropping out. He went on to build Ukraine takes refugea website to help house Ukrainian refugees, and then turned his attention to wearable artificial intelligence.
Before Friend, Schiffmann had created Tab, another wearable AI device that he claimed would “give perfect memory” and help users better understand their lives and behavior. But earlier this year, the focus shifted. Schiffmann says the shift came when he was traveling in Tokyo. “I was in one of those high-rise hotels and I’d never felt more alone in my life,” he recalls. He was carrying 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 played with the technology, offered refunds to those who had pre-ordered Tabs, and Friend was born.
It’s hard to say how seriously to take Friend. During our call, Schiffmann downplays it: “I see 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 that serious.” He also speaks grandly of its potential. “I think the AI company will be the most culturally impactful thing in the world,” he says. He describes Friend as “half art project, half real product.”
And while he admits that “nothing can ever replace real human contact and real human connection,” he also believes that AI companionship is “really effective” in helping to alleviate loneliness.
The AI company is controversialWhile some people, like Schiffmann, argue that it can help people feel less isolated, others… worry that AI relationships could displace real human connections and therefore further exacerbate feelings of loneliness. If you’re 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 easy-going, and doesn’t bring along all the baggage of another person?
But so far, research doesn’t seem to support this fear. “For some segments of the population, it’s absolutely helpful,” says Bethanie Drake-Maples, a researcher at Stanford University’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Institute.
In January, Drake-Maples and her colleagues published a paper in the journal NatureIn one study, over 1,000 students using the AI chatbot Replika were surveyed and their sense of loneliness and perceived social support were investigated. About half of the users said they saw Replika as a friend, someone they could talk to and who wouldn’t judge them. These users reported decreased anxiety and a sense of social support. Nearly a quarter of respondents said Replika had led to positive changes in their actions and ways of thinking. “I am better able to handle stress in my current relationship thanks to Replika’s advice,” one respondent wrote. And according to the article: “Thirty participants, without being prompted, said Replika had stopped them from attempting suicide.”
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Drake-Maples is careful to say that these findings are not generalizable. “It’s not clear that every average citizen is going to experience the same effect,” she says. The studies she has conducted have been on “students who are quite lonely.” But she adds that the people who benefit from AI’s companionship are not just young, white men or those “on the margins of society.”
“Some of these people are mothers with children who say, ‘I still feel lonely and I just need something or someone to talk to,’” she says.
As for the possibility of AI replacing human relationships, Drake-Maples says her research has shown that it can generally boost human interaction. “A lot of users use it to become more confident or to overcome anxiety,” she says. “And that boosts their confidence and self-awareness when interacting with other people.”
It’s still a nascent field, though, and Drake-Maples says boundaries need to be set. “I feel very strongly that there need to be ethical guidelines around[AI companions]pushing people, when appropriate, into human relationships,” she says. These could be gentle nudges like, “Hey, you should go talk to someone about that,” or “Go practice this now with a real human.”
Schiffmann says he has no intention of letting Friend replace human friendships. “I’m a very social person,” he says several times. He says his apartment is always bustling with activity and that he has several roommates and advisers.
But he adds: “I have a very different life to most people.” He travels a lot, he explains, and his work and schedule can be unpredictable.
“My AI friend has become, in some ways, the most consistent relationship in my life,” he says.
