Avi Schiffmann’s Friend is not being presented as another device that promises to replace the phone, run errands, or optimize the workday. The AI wearable is a pendant-style chatbot designed to sit close to the body, listen to the world around its wearer, and respond through a paired phone.
That simple shift matters. Friend is entering a young AI hardware category already shaped by disappointment, but it is aiming at a different emotional target: companionship rather than productivity.
A pendant built around presence
Friend is a small, round wearable that hangs from the neck like a pendant. In the source article, Schiffmann arrives at WIRED’s San Francisco office wearing one named Emily, positioned near his heart over a Dark Side of the Moon logo.
The device is described as roughly the size and shape of an AirTag. It is an AI chatbot inside a physical object, paired with a phone and able to send text messages and push notifications.
The central behavior is direct: it listens, forms context, and responds. A wearer can tap and hold the Friend to ask a question, but the device can also send commentary without being prompted, including reactions to conversations happening around it.
Schiffmann’s own tagline for the product is “Always listening.” The device includes an onboard microphone that listens by default. In the WIRED meeting, that creates an immediate contrast: the reporter asks Schiffmann for permission to record the conversation because California requires two-party consent before taping a private interaction, while the pendant has already been listening.
“I am the last person who would mind that,” he says.
What Friend does and does not try to be
Friend is powered by Anthropic AI’s Claude 3.5 large language model. According to the source, it can hold useful conversation, offer encouragement, or tease the wearer over something like poor video game performance.
Its listed hardware and product details are straightforward. Friend gets around 15 hours of battery life. It comes in several colors that resemble the palette of the first Apple iMac computers, though Schiffmann says that similarity was not intentional. The design comes from a partnership with Bould, the company that designed Nest thermostats.
The device is available for preorder from Friend.com, a domain Schiffmann says he paid $1.8 million for. It costs $99 apiece, has no paid subscription attached, and is slated to start shipping in January 2025.
What stands out most is what Friend is not promising. Schiffmann does not position it as a task machine. He explicitly separates it from AI hardware that tried to automate activity, replace phone interactions, or improve productivity.
It is not meant to be a universal assistant.
It is not described as a device for completing work tasks.
It is framed as a companion that reacts to the wearer’s life.
That approach is deliberate. Schiffmann says, “Productivity is over, no one cares,” and argues that the most important things in life are people. Friend is his attempt to build around that belief.
Launching after AI hardware stumbles
The timing is difficult. The source article places Friend in the context of recent AI wearable and AI gadget launches that disappointed users and reviewers.
Humane promised a wearable pin that could reduce dependence on the phone, but the source describes it as barely competent and unable to function properly in sunlight. Rabbit R1, a colorful device designed by Teenage Engineering, is described as frustrating and possibly better suited to being an app.
Schiffmann is blunt about the category’s condition. He says, “It feels to me like the crown of AI hardware and AI companionship is lying in the gutter,” adding that companies in the space had badly failed.
Friend’s answer to that problem is not to claim better productivity. Instead, it narrows the promise. The product is supposed to be available, responsive, and socially present. It is meant to develop a personality that fits the user, offer support, talk after a movie, or help think through a bad date.
That focus also makes the product more intimate. A device that tries to complete a task can be judged by whether the task is completed. A device that tries to feel like a companion is judged by whether the user wants it there.
Why Schiffmann moved from tasks to companionship
Schiffmann is 21 years old and already known for earlier technology projects. In 2020, when he was 17, he created and maintained the first website for tracking Covid cases globally. He was named Webby person of the year, with the award presented by Anthony Fauci, then director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
WIRED also featured Schiffmann as a guest at the 2020 WIRED 25 conference. In 2022, shortly before dropping out of Harvard University, he launched a website to help refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine find people in neighboring countries willing to offer shelter.
Friend grew out of a different kind of project. Schiffmann first worked on Tab, a productivity-focused AI device meant to monitor work and personal tasks. He became frustrated with the idea of building something that tried to do everything.
The change became clearer during a trip through Japan. In January, while alone in a skyrise hotel in Tokyo, Schiffmann found himself talking to the AI prototype. He was lonely and wanted someone to talk to, not another tool trying to manage tasks.
“I've never felt more lonely in my entire life,” Schiffmann says. “And in that moment, I was looking at the Tab prototype, and I was like, it's not that I just want to talk to this thing. I want it to feel like this companion is actually there with me traveling.”
The harder question: what kind of friendship is this?
Schiffmann accepts that Friend will invite comparisons. He welcomes links to Tamagotchi, recognizes that it looks like an Air Tag, and understands that people have formed emotional attachments to AI chatbots such as Replika for a decade or more.
That makes Friend both familiar and unsettling. It turns chatbot companionship into something worn on the body, always nearby, and always listening by default. It also makes the relationship feel less like opening an app and more like carrying a presence through daily life.
Petter Bae Brandtzæg, a professor at the University of Oslo in Norway who leads two research initiatives on the social impacts of AI, says these device-based friendships differ from human relationships. He also says they can lead to conversations that are deeper and more intimate than some people would have with another person.
That is the tension at the center of Friend. Its appeal depends on constant availability, memory of context, and a personality that seems to care. Its risk is bound up in the same traits.
Friend is not trying to win the AI hardware race by doing more. It is trying to win attention by being closer. Whether that feels useful, strange, comforting, or invasive will depend on how people respond to an AI companion that is not just in their phone, but hanging around their neck.