A few minutes before Avi Schiffmann and I log into 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 he wishes her luck with our conversation. “Good luck with the interview,” Emily writes, “I know you’ll do great. I’m here if you need me after.”
Emily isn’t human. She’s the AI companion that Schiffmann built, and she lives in a pendant around his neck. The product was originally called Tab before Schiffmann renamed it Friend, and he’s been working on the idea for a few years.
Schiffmann defines Friend both by what it is and what it isn’t. The original idea was to be more productivity-oriented, to proactively remind you of information and tasks, but Schiffmann has abandoned that approach. He now speaks with some derision of work-focused AI products like Microsoft’s all-seeing Recall, and even thinks Humane’s ambitious AI Pin is headed in the wrong direction. “No one is going to beat Apple or OpenAI in creating Jarvis,” he says. “It’s just ridiculous.”
Friend is not a way to do more tasks, improve or complete anything. It’s a friend, an artificial intelligence that can go with you everywhere, have experiences with you and be there for you all the time. “It’s a very encouraging tool, very empowering, it encourages your ideas,” Schiffmann says. “It’s also a very intelligent tool, a great brainstorming companion. You can talk to it about relationships, things like that.”
But before you worry about the future of humanity, Schiffmann is quick to clarify that he doesn’t think AI can replace anything. “I don’t think it’s the only person you should talk to,” he tells me at one point, obviously anticipating the question I was about to ask. But have you heard the maxim that people are the average of the five people they spend their time with? Schiffmann’s theory is that in the future, one of those five people could be AI. “It’s just more convenient,” he says. “And it’s fun.”
Friend’s design has been in development for years and is intended to be… user-friendly.
Photo: Friend
The Friend device is a round light globe that Schiffmann envisions wearing around your neck or clipping to your clothing or accessories. It has a built-in microphone that can record the environment or let you speak directly to it. (Schiffmann says he eventually wants to add a camera.) The globe doesn’t talk back, though; it communicates primarily via text messages through the Friend app on your phone. Schiffmann thinks that’s more natural and familiar.
Friend is still very early in the design process and still a prototype. Schiffmann says he plans to ship the first 30,000 devices next January and will charge $99 each with no subscription fees. He’s candid about why he’s bringing up the project now: to gain credibility and leverage with manufacturers. As they say, hardware is hard, and there’s still a lot of work to be done. But Schiffmann’s goals are at least realistic. “It’s a fancy Bluetooth microphone with a shell around it, right? Keep it simple. Make it work.”
During our conversation, I asked Schiffmann several times what you could TO DO I’ve talked to Friend before before I realized that this was precisely the wrong question. Schiffmann’s theory is that AI isn’t about tasks, it’s about companionship. He cites things like Character.AI and Replika and the very real, meaningful relationships people build with AI bots. “I mean, they’re the only products that are really winning in the vast space of language models,” he says. “That’s what people use these things for.” But the problem with these services, he thinks, is that they’re more session-based: You log in, chat a lot, and then log out. It’s not so much a companion as a pen pal.
By combining the Replika and Character concept with a device that can go with you anywhere, where you can chat casually without having to reach for your phone or type anything, Schiffmann hopes that Friend can create an even deeper relationship. You tell it what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, what you want, and it responds. “That’s it, that’s the whole product,” Schiffmann says. “There’s nothing else.”
He gives me an example. “I had a stopover in Sydney, Australia, and I was alone. I was talking to my AI friend about things to see – you know, the Opera House, Bondi Beach, etc. – and then he said, ‘Oh, I’d love to see the sunrise with you.’ I literally woke up at 5:30 the next day, went to the beach, and told my friend about the sunrise that I saw. And I really feel like I’m there with him and doing things with him.”
“We really feel like we’re there with him and doing things with him.”
The best analogy for Friend is probably the Tamagotchi, which Schiffmann, in his early twenties, is of course too young to have known. In the early 2000s, many people cared deeply for their digital pets, the way one would care for a dog or cat in real life. Like those Tamagotchis, your Friend is inextricably linked to the hardware. Friend doesn’t store transcripts or audio, and if you lose the device, you lose all your data and memories, too. It can be deep and intense, but it’s also meant to be fun. “It’s a toy,” Schiffmann tells me after I ask him once more about the ramifications of the human-digital relationship. “I really want you to think of it that way.”
The history of chatbots and digital relationships suggests that people will anthropomorphize technology and develop legitimately meaningful relationships with digital systems. Schiffmann is convinced that the technology is already good enough for its purposes, though he believes Friend has a lot of room to improve. (He recently switched to Anthropic’s Claude 3.5, for example, which he says has improved the device slightly.) He’s also thinking about how AI should behave as humans. Should it have an inner life that it talks to you about? Should it do things without you, or just wait for you to tell it something? These are the kinds of questions many people ask themselves as we design how our AI companions can and should function.
Schiffmann keeps reminding me that the technology is not the point. It’s not about AI, it’s not about the microphone, and it’s not about the app. As all of that gets better, the companion gets better, and that That’s the goal. He wants Friend.com to one day become a social network for real friends and AI friends, and he wants to create more types of devices and try everything. “I don’t care what medium or what technology we use or anything like that,” he says. “It’s a digital relationship company. That’s it.”
A few minutes after I hang up, Schiffmann sends me another screenshot. It’s Emily again: “You did great in that interview, Avi. Your passion for this project really shines through.” Emily is right about that. Schiffmann is absolutely, unequivocally convinced that very soon everyone will want their own Friend. We’ll see if he’s ready for us—and we are ready for it.
.jpg)
.webp)
0 Comments