Your New Friend AI Pendant Can Now Pay You Back

Friend CEO Avi Schiffmann welcomes me to his palace—what he calls his mansion in San Francisco.

He sits on a couch in his living room, wearing an orange shirt with a cartoon of the motorcycle ridden by Italian racing driver Valentino Rossi. He puts his feet up on the side table and leans back, round, soft round A friend hanging from his neck on a yellow string.

This is the second iteration of the Friend necklaceA controversial AI device that almost everyone (me included) seems to hate. The company announced the device on Thursday until X is his new handle.

The first version of Friend was The always-on AI is wearable he replied via text message. The main difference here is the rear speaker which allows the device to respond loudly. This has changed the shape of the pendant, as the floor and the speaker are wider than before. His AI chops have also been upgraded, now he’s walking The latest versions of OpenAI.

Courtesy of Friend

As a first step, Friend wants to have digital users who can talk to them and have long conversations with them. Unlike the original, each new pendant comes with a default voice and pre-set personality. The user cannot change the word or name, so you are blocked by the Friend. (Your mileage may vary depending on how friendly the item is to you.)

The new pendant costs $249, a significant increase from the original price of $129. You can buy now Bwenzi.comSchiffmann circuit paid $1.8 million about. There’s also a $10 monthly subscription that allows the AI ​​to remember conversations you’ve had for more than 30 days. The cute necklace around Schiffmann’s neck is part of a product that’s said to be coming later this year.

Schiffmann got it first headlines in 2020 as a 17-year-old who built a website to follow Covid 19 cases during the epidemic. Now 24, he is best known – and famous – for leading a company that creates a device that many call dystopian or something out of the ordinary. Black Mirror part.

“I’ve grown a lot,” Schiffmann tells me every time I see him.

Behind Schiffmann’s sofa is a beautifully painted picture of a Paris subway station with an advertisement for the Friend pendant on the wall. The ads, which were placed by Schiffmann’s company across New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago in 2025—and Paris in early 2026—caused a major push by to argue in the use of AI. People wrote against them and insisted that they dehumanizingmaking a litany of emotional headlines about sales. Advertising attracts more attention than ever before. (The paintings he has a picture of at home cost $500, Schiffmann tells me later.)