Good friend CEO Avi Schiffmann welcomes me into his palace—what he calls his giant residence in San Francisco.
He sits on the sofa in his lounge, clad in an orange shirt emblazoned with a cartoon model of the bike pushed by Italian racer Valentino Rossi. He props his toes up on the facet desk and leans again, a spherical, softly glowing round Friend pendant dangling from a yellow wire round his neck.
This is the second iteration of the Friend necklace, the controversial AI companion system that virtually everybody (me included) appears to hate. The corporate introduced the system on Thursday via its new X handle.
The primary model of Good friend was an always-listening AI wearable that responded through textual content message. The massive replace right here is a speaker on the again that lets the system voice its responses aloud. That has modified the form of the pendant, as the underside with the speaker is bulkier than before. Its AI chops have additionally been upgraded, now operating OpenAI’s latest models.
Courtesy of Good friend
Like the first go, Good friend goals to be a digital companion customers can discuss to and maintain lengthy conversations with. In contrast to the unique, every new pendant comes with a random voice and persona already established. The consumer can’t change the voice or title, so that you’re locked in with that Good friend. (Your mileage could range on how pleasant the factor really is to you.)
The brand new pendant prices $249, a marked enhance over the unique’s $129 value. You should buy one now on Friend.com, a site Schiffmann paid $1.8 million for. There is additionally an elective $10 month-to-month subscription that lets the AI keep in mind the conversations you’ve had for longer than 30 days. The colourful wire round Schiffmann’s neck is a part of an equipment assortment he says might be coming later this 12 months.
Schiffmann first garnered headlines in 2020 as a 17-year-old who constructed a website to observe Covid-19 circumstances throughout the pandemic. Now 24, he’s much more well-known—and outright infamous—for main an organization that makes a tool many have known as dystopian or like one thing out of a Black Mirror episode.
“I’ve grown up rather a lot,” Schiffmann tells me nearly each time I see him.
Behind Schiffmann’s sofa is a big framed {photograph} of a Paris subway station with advertisements for the Good friend pendant splayed throughout the partitions. The advertisements, positioned by Schiffmann’s firm throughout New York Metropolis, Los Angeles, and Chicago in 2025—and Paris in early 2026—sparked vigorous pushback and controversy over AI utilization. Folks graffitied them in protest and griped that they devalued humanity, producing a litany of poignant headlines about the advertisements. The advertising bought way more consideration than the precise product ever did. (The artwork body he’s bought the picture in at residence price $500, Schiffmann tells me later. Replace: Schiffmann clarified that it was really $5,000.)
Disclaimer: This article is sourced from external platforms. OverBeta has not independently verified the information. Readers are advised to verify details before relying on them.
