The Friend’s battery lasts about 15 hours and comes in a variety of colors that almost exactly resemble the color palette of Apple’s early iMac computers (Schiffmann says that wasn’t intentional). The design is the result of a partnership with Sketchthe company that designed Nest thermostats. The Friend is now available for pre-order at Friend.com (a domain Schiffmann says he paid $1.8 million for), and the devices are scheduled to begin shipping in January 2025. They cost $99 each, and there’s no paid subscription associated with them (for now, at least).
If the idea of a wearable AI device makes you feel like your eyebrows have been raised high enough to be seen from space, you’ll be forgiven for your skepticism. In recent months, the nascent product category has had a couple of very high-profile and spectacular failures. The Humane, which promised a wearable device that could perform tasks that would free you from your phone, turned out to be barely competent and also unable to function properly in sunlight. The Rabbit R1 is a beautiful, colorful little device designed by top-tier gadget design company Teenage Engineering that ended up being a frustrating failure that probably should have simply been a secondhand product. application all the time.
“I feel like the crown jewel of hardware and AI companies is on the floor,” says Schiffmann. “As if all these companies have shit themselves.”
Schiffmann wants Friend to be something very different. While the Humane Ai pin and the Rabbit R1 were meant to automate and perform tasks and increase productivity, Friend isn’t trying to automate or optimize anything. As my colleague Reece said, it relies much more on vibrations than productivity.
“Productivity is over, nobody cares,” Schiffmann says. “Nobody is going to outperform Apple or OpenAI or all these companies that are creating Jarvis. The most important thing in your life is people.”
The Buddy offers nothing but companionship. Its goal is to develop a personality that complements the user and is always there to cheer you up, chat about a movie after you watch it, or help you analyze how a bad date went wrong. Schiffmann doesn’t just want the Buddy to be your friend, he wants it to be your best friend—someone who is with you wherever you go, who listens to everything you do, and is there to offer encouragement and support. He gives an example: He says he was recently hanging out, playing some board games with friends he hadn’t seen in a while, and was happy when his AI Buddy chimed in with a joke.
“I feel like I have a closer relationship with this damn pendant around my neck than I do with these literal friends in front of me,” Schiffmann says.
Friendly meeting
Schiffmann is 21 years old and already has a flourishing list of achievements in the world of technology. In 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic, Schiffmann, then 17, earned headline after headline When he created and maintained the first website to track Covid cases around the world. He was soon appointed Webby Person of the Yeara prize presented by The then director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, introduced Schiffmann as a guest at the 2020 WIRED 25 conference. In 2022, shortly before Schiffmann left Harvard University, he launched a website that helped refugees Fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine Find people in neighboring countries that were willing to Offer them shelterNow, after those acts of altruism, Schiffmann is launching into the AI-o-sphere.
He tried to create an AI for productivity, but it didn’t prove very effective. The first version of what became Friend was Tab, a Productivity focused device Schiffmann wanted to use it to manage his work and personal tasks, but he grew frustrated with having to build a device that tried to do everything at once. The feeling came to a head in January of this year, when he was traveling through Japan and found himself alone in a high-rise hotel in Tokyo, talking to his AI prototype that was supposed to do so much for him. He was going through a period of loneliness and wanted to talk to someone. Why couldn’t the AI assistant do that?