People have been turning to technology to counter loneliness for years, but this is definitely a new approach. Avi Schiffmann, famous for building a Webby Award-winning website to track COVID-19, thinks we would all be a little less lonely if we wore an AI around our neck.
The device he’s building, called Friend, is worn like a necklace and connects to your phone via Bluetooth. It constantly listens to you as you go throughout your day and can proactively send you an in-app message on your phone when it thinks you need a boost or just someone to talk to. You can also press a button to talk to it, like a walkie-talkie, and it will respond with a message.
Schiffmann believes that being able to speak to a piece of hardware will be better than interacting with a bot solely through text on an app. “I would really view the product as like an emotional toy. I think the only successful use case of large language models is people talking about their day and their feelings to tools like Replika or Character.AI. But with hardware present, I believe it is a better emotional connect,” he said. Friend is currently available for preorder for $99, with devices expected to ship in January.