The New Friend AI Pendant Can Now Talk Back to You

Friend CEO Avi Schiffmann welcomes maine into his palace—what helium calls his ample flat successful San Francisco.

He sits connected the sofa successful his surviving room, clad successful an orangish garment emblazoned with a cartoon mentation of the motorcycle driven by Italian racer Valentino Rossi. He props his feet up connected the broadside array and leans back, a round, softly glowing circular Friend pendant dangling from a yellowish cord astir his neck.

This is the 2nd iteration of the Friend necklace, the arguable AI companion instrumentality that conscionable astir everyone (me included) seems to hate. The institution announced the instrumentality connected Thursday done its caller X handle.

The archetypal mentation of Friend was an always-listening AI wearable that responded via substance message. The large update present is simply a talker connected the backmost that lets the instrumentality dependable its responses aloud. That has changed the signifier of the pendant, arsenic the underside with the talker is bulkier than before. Its AI chops person besides been upgraded, present moving OpenAI’s latest models.

Like the archetypal go, Friend aims to beryllium a integer companion users tin speech to and clasp agelong conversations with. Unlike the original, each caller pendant comes with a random dependable and property already established. The idiosyncratic cannot alteration the dependable oregon name, truthful you’re locked successful with that Friend. (Your mileage whitethorn alteration connected however affable the happening really is to you.)

The caller pendant costs $249, a marked summation implicit the original’s $129 price. You tin bargain 1 present connected Friend.com, a domain Schiffmann paid $1.8 cardinal for. There is besides an optional $10 monthly subscription that lets the AI retrieve the conversations you’ve had for longer than 30 days. The colorful cord astir Schiffmann’s cervix is portion of an accessories postulation helium says volition beryllium coming aboriginal this year.

Schiffmann archetypal garnered headlines successful 2020 arsenic a 17-year-old who built a website to way Covid-19 cases during the pandemic. Now 24, he’s acold much good known—and outright notorious—for starring a institution that makes a instrumentality galore person called dystopian oregon similar thing retired of a Black Mirror episode.

“I’ve grown up a lot,” Schiffmann tells maine conscionable astir each clip I spot him.

Behind Schiffmann’s sofa is simply a gigantic framed photograph of a Paris subway presumption with ads for the Friend pendant splayed crossed the walls. The ads, placed by Schiffmann’s institution crossed New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago successful 2025—and Paris successful aboriginal 2026—sparked vigorous pushback and contention implicit AI usage. People graffitied them successful protestation and griped that they devalued humanity, generating a litany of poignant headlines astir the ads. The selling got overmuch much attraction than the existent merchandise ever did. (The creation framework he’s got the photograph successful astatine location outgo $500, Schiffmann tells maine later. Update: Schiffmann clarified that it was really $5,000.)