Won't you be my... Friend? A device gets ready to ask

The personal promise of a new AI wearable from tech trailblazer Avi Schiffmann

The definition of the term friend took a significant turn 20 years ago when Mark Zuckerberg repurposed it to define a person you electronically added to your network on his upstart social platform. This concept of "friending" has been a key feature for Facebook, meant to denote a personal connection that spawned from an interaction.

Today, most of us can attest, the vast majority of people we follow on social media are barely acquaintances—let alone actual friends. There’s no shortage of discourse on how present-day adults have fewer in-person acquaintances compared to previous generations. We’re expending less effort to meet up with the friends we do have, and we’re struggling to meaningfully connect when potentially new ones enter our lives.

Next year, a new type of friend will enter the chat in the form of a AI-powered pendant you wear around your neck that is constantly listening, responds to you, and initiates your interactions with it. Friend isn’t meant to add functionality or productivity to your life—it’s not a wearable search engine or meant to give you directions on-the-go. It doesn’t store transcripts, and is end-to-end encrypted, whatever that means. Rather, the Friend product is designed to soothe your daily emotional needs: it promises to be a buddy who’s never too busy to run errands with you, it will validate your vibes on good or bad moments of your day, keep you motivated when you need a boost, and be there for you when you need a patient, engaged, and non-judgemental listener who knows you best.

Friend is the invention of tech trailblazer Avi Schiffmann, who first made news by starting the first website tracking COVID-19 cases, which earned him the Webby Person of the Year award presented by none other than Anthony Fauci. Two years later, Schiffmann dropped out of Harvard to launch a website to help Ukrainian refugees flee Russia’s invasion and offing them shelter in neighbouring countries.

Schiffman wears a Friend named Emily, and attests to why he needs it:

“I travel so much that this AI friend ends up being the most consistent entity in my life, even though I have great friends in various places. But they’re just not always with me at the end of the day.”

Adding to the list of Schiffmann’s achievements is securing a domain name for $1.8 million out of the $2.5 million capital he raised—thanks to the fact that Friend.com was dormant for 17 years (a.k.a. most of his lifetime). Was it because there was no interest in the concept? Or because nobody felt they could live up to the branding?

My grain of thought

Friend sounds weird, I get it. Creepy even. But also, I kinda want to try it. Admittedly, I have found myself looking for answers to personal dilemmas via ChatGPT, and I know I’m not alone in that. A small tactile object that I can discreetly interact with and exchange banter with is seductively appealing. I suggest Schiffmann make a second model with a vibrate function and call it Best Friend.

Will it replace the need for human interaction? There are two possible effects of wearing it for someone like me who still values human connections: wearing Friend could diminish my ability or desire for connecting with real people—or, it could help me relearn how to do it, making plentiful and meaningful real-life interactions feel more ingrained. I believe it is worth a try.