David Pierce, reporting for The Verge:

A few minutes before Avi Schiffmann and I get on Google Meet to talk about the new product he’s building, an AI companion called “Friend,” he sends me a screenshot of a message he just received. It’s from “Emily,” and it wishes him luck with our chat. “Good luck with the interview,” Emily writes, “I know you’ll do great. I’m here if you need me after.”

Emily is not human. It’s the AI companion Schiffmann has been building, and it lives in a pendant hung around his neck. The product was initially named Tab before Schiffmann pivoted to calling it Friend, and he’s been working on the idea for the last couple of years.

Here’s the pitch: a $100 circular disk that hangs off a necklace chain that one takes everywhere, wearing it as part of their outfit. Aside from the fact that it looks like one of those anti-theft security tags on clothes at the mall, this entire product is idiotic, not because I don’t think it’s a great solution to the loneliness epidemic plaguing the world’s youth — particularly young men, who’ll be the most eager to purchase a robot necklace — but because it is essentially an overpriced smartphone app with an unnecessary hardware component. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is exactly the same deal as the Rabbit R1 or Humane Ai Pin, except this one literally needs a smartphone app to work.

Notice how Pierce says Emily writes a response. This pendant clearly doesn’t have a screen, so where are those words printed? In a smartphone notification, of course. This is seriously how this product works: The button is pushed at the front of the apparatus, someone begins speaking into it, and then it replies with a notification pushed to the owner’s phone. It’s just a Bluetooth gadget that sends some information to a large language model in the cloud and back down to an app. I also know of a way to replicate that functionality right now, in the comfort of my own home, by paying just $20 a month: ChatGPT, which is coincidentally rolling out its new voice mode to paying customers starting Tuesday.

Avi Schiffmann, Friend’s founder, raised $2.5 million for this project, which any middle schooler could create after taking a 20-minute prompt engineering course on Skillshare. The model is just a fine-tuned version of Anthropic’s Claude designed to act overly friendly, playful, and personable, just like a real friend. That’s all good — I appreciate the idea of virtual friends and think it’s a great use case for artificial intelligence, honestly — but what isn’t acceptable is the hardware product. It’s evident that hardware makes money since all the software has already been made by the now-big names like Anthropic, Perplexity, and OpenAI, but that’s no excuse to push a nonsense, unnecessary fashion accessory.

People are fawning all over the promotion video, which Schiffmann posted to the social media website X, eliciting an entertaining quip from Marques Brownlee, a tech YouTuber known for calling the Ai Pin the “worst product” he’s ever reviewed: “Wait, this isn’t a skit?” Brownlee is correct: it sniffs like a comedy skit or parody for a product that shouldn’t exist. This could’ve been a smartphone app — hell, it should’ve been a smartphone app, and anything more than that is just embarrassing.

I don’t want to direct my anger toward this one Harvard drop-out because that’s blatant bullying. If he wants to sell an overpriced product to suckers, so be it — this is America, the land of $1,200 ripped sweatshirts. What frustrates me is that the technology industry has become inundated by these cheaply made, unnecessary hardware gizmos that can be easily supplanted by phone apps. People love their phones, and every one of these AI hardware companies is fully aware of that, so why not take advantage of the smartphone and build a great app?

Some firms have already done this: Take Dot, by New Computer, for example. It’s got a great web domain, which I’m sure didn’t cost as much as Friend’s friend.com: new.computer. The interface is simple: a chatbot that learns from someone’s hobbies, interests, and activities. It begins by asking the user to write about themselves, almost like a journal, with a variety of introductory prompts. What do they like to eat? What do they do for a living? Do they live alone? Once it learns enough, it begins writing back, asking questions, and chatting, just like a real bonafide internet friend. Is that not exactly what Friend does? The only difference is that Friend has a voice mode, but I’m sure adding dictation to Dot wouldn’t be that complicated. Here’s how New Computer describes itself:

Our company is called New Computer because we believe that computers should feel more aware, more proactive, and more human than their current form. Dot is the first step along that pathway for us.

“Computers should feel more… human than their current form.” Eloquently put; I strongly agree. Dot costs $12 a month, a perfectly reasonable price for something that digests sometimes hundreds of messages a day, and the company is quickly iterating on it. Would I subscribe? No, because I don’t enjoy journaling and don’t have the need to, but for people who want a friend-like chatbot, I think it’s the best option. There’s room for more products like it, and I think Friend would do awesomely in the space, especially if it ran the models on-device so it didn’t have to charge a subscription. And it could add widgets, Live Activities, and Shortcuts — and it could be available on the Mac or in a web browser. The options are limitless. If I had $2.5 million, I’d put it to good use.

This leads me to what happens when you give idiots millions of dollars. Emanuel Maiberg and Jason Koebler, reporting for 404 Media:

Friend, an AI companion company announced today, spent $1.8 million out of a total of $2.5 million it raised to start the company on its domain name, friend.com, according to its founder Avi Schiffmann and a screenshot of the transaction shared with 404 Media. 

In response to a question on Twitter from someone who asked him how much he paid for the domain, Schiffmann tweeted $1.8 million, which I assumed was a joke because Fast Company previously reported raised $1.9 million to start the company. TechCrunch reported today that Schiffmann raised $2.5 million at a $50 million valuation. Schiffmann confirmed to 404 Media he raised close to $2.5 million.

My first reaction to this product was not about the hardware itself, but about the domain — so, I guess, well done. Mission accomplished, it’ll certainly get people talking. I went, “That must’ve been a really expensive domain. Maybe he got it through a friend of a friend or something.” Nope, Schiffmann really bought the domain for $1.8 million, and that’s not even including the renewal cost I’m sure he’ll have to incur every year. How is this company even real? That’s more than half of the total capital raised spent on just one domain for a glorified smartphone app that costs $100 and looks like a cheap plastic toy. I am a technology optimist; I favor the rapid advancement of AI technology because I think it will result in a net positive for humanity. This is just a waste of time and a complete embarrassment to every maxim of business.