I Hate My Friend: The chatbot-enabled Friend necklace eavesdrops on your life and provides a running commentary that’s snarky and unhelpful. Worse, it can also make the people around you uneasy.

people have the right to do things you personally disapprove of

meanwhile, literally in the headline:

Worse, it can also make the people around you uneasy.

no one is saying you don’t have “the right” to wear this Spyware Pendant in your one-party consent state.

people are saying it’s creepy and you’re jumping in defending it with “well, technically, it’s not illegal, depending on state law”. you’re just completely missing the point entirely.

this is like, if someone wrote an article about how people are annoyed by someone microwaving fish in the office cafeteria, you chimed in with “well they can simply quit and find a different job where people don’t microwave fish at the office”.

“data is the new oil”

most people keep their phones in their pockets, which would ruin audio quality for 24/7 listening, and Apple and Android are able to restrict app permissions as well to prevent it.

VC money doesn’t care about whether normal people actually want a device like this. what they’re really after is “we’re collecting a bunch of user-specific data that no one else has, that we can sell to people who think it’ll help them do better ad targeting (among other things)”

Yeah that adds up. Everything is about naked, cynical capitalism now. I guess my millennial brain is stuck in the era where I thought the point of consumer electronics was to make cool devices that people wanted to buy.

archive.is link

The AI-powered Friend pendant is now out in the world. If you live in the US or Canada, you can buy one for $129.

The smooth plastic disc is just under 2 inches in diameter; it looks and feels a little like a beefy Apple AirTag. Inside are some LEDs and a Bluetooth radio that connects you (through your iPhone) to a chatbot in the cloud that’s powered by Google’s Gemini 2.5 model. You can tap on the disc to ask your Friend questions as it dangles around your neck, and it responds to your voice prompts by sending you text messages through the companion app. You can reply to these messages with your voice or via text to keep the conversation going.

It also listens to whatever you’re doing as you move through the world, no tap required, and offers a running commentary on the interactions you have throughout your day. To perform that trick, the device has microphones that are always activated.

If the idea of a microphone-packed wearable that’s always listening to your conversations raises privacy concerns for you, just know that you’re not alone. If your experience is anything like ours, wearing the Friend will likely earn you the ire of everyone around you. Curiously, you might even end up being bullied by the chatbot itself.

yeah, no, we still disagree. I think you are missing the point completely, and continually.

general protip: if the conversation is about some behavior being creepy or weird or against social mores, and you jump in talking about the legality of it, you are missing the point, and also contributing to the creepiness.

for another example, upskirt photography was legal in the US until 2004 (at least at the federal level, state laws seem to have trickled in around the same timeframe)

hop in a time machine back to 2000, and imagine there’s a digital camera that’s marketing itself as being very easy to attach to your shoe in order to take surreptitious upskirt photos.

people say “wow that’s a fucking creepy product” and you jump in to say that technically it’s not illegal, and people have the right to attach cameras to their shoes. and if a woman is wearing a skirt in a crowd of people, and sees a guy with a camera on his shoe, she has the right to walk away from him. that is technically true, and also completely misses the actual point.

if you think upskirt photos are a bad analogy, here’s a reddit thread from 2 weeks ago about a gynecologist wearing the “Meta Ray-Ban” sunglasses that have a built-in camera.

You can conveniently ask the device around your neck a question.

You then must pull out a different device from your pocket with exactly the same functionality to get the answer thereby saving you 0 time.

This privilege costs over $100.

But I’m still able to use it, so.

yeah. except when you’re not.

because this “I can do whatever I want” Ron-Swanson-wannabe brand of libertarianism is very predictable.

if you go to a dinner party and the host notices your Spyware Amulet and says “turn that off or leave my house” would you respect their property rights? without pissing and moaning about it?

if a bar or restaurant banned them (like happened with Google Glass) would you respect that rule as well?

if you were on a date, and your date noticed and said “that’s kinda creepy, would you mind turning it off?” would you do it? or would you start ranting about how it’s not infringing on your date’s rights?

Totally normal

In our meeting, he asked us not to unbox the devices in front of him because he is in love with someone and wants the first time he witnesses a Friend unboxing to be with her.

Yeah that adds up. Everything is about naked, cynical capitalism now. I guess my millennial brain is stuck in the era where I thought the point of consumer electronics was to make cool devices that people wanted to buy.

archive.is link

The AI-powered Friend pendant is now out in the world. If you live in the US or Canada, you can buy one for $129.

The smooth plastic disc is just under 2 inches in diameter; it looks and feels a little like a beefy Apple AirTag. Inside are some LEDs and a Bluetooth radio that connects you (through your iPhone) to a chatbot in the cloud that’s powered by Google’s Gemini 2.5 model. You can tap on the disc to ask your Friend questions as it dangles around your neck, and it responds to your voice prompts by sending you text messages through the companion app. You can reply to these messages with your voice or via text to keep the conversation going.

It also listens to whatever you’re doing as you move through the world, no tap required, and offers a running commentary on the interactions you have throughout your day. To perform that trick, the device has microphones that are always activated.

If the idea of a microphone-packed wearable that’s always listening to your conversations raises privacy concerns for you, just know that you’re not alone. If your experience is anything like ours, wearing the Friend will likely earn you the ire of everyone around you. Curiously, you might even end up being bullied by the chatbot itself.

If I wanted to READ ai “snark”, I would spend more time on facebook, or go back to reddit. How hard could it be to slap a battery and 4G/5G modem on a google home or alexa? Eiter of which would be easier to run on a phone or tablet, which also includes speakers.

How do these morons that can’t match the convenience of existing privacy nightmares, or even DIY stuff, continue to get VC funding?

Get VC funding… like this:

Schiffmann posits himself as older now, wiser, more experienced than he was when he first debuted the Friend necklace. (He is 22.) He has grown out his hair and cultivated a beard

A wise 22 year old with a beard… ‍

The VCs are clueless, they jump on a bunch of “feels good” and “disruptive young blood” stuff, hoping that maybe 1 in 10 will not fall and burn.

You can conveniently ask the device around your neck a question.

You then must pull out a different device from your pocket with exactly the same functionality to get the answer thereby saving you 0 time.

This privilege costs over $100.

why are techbros so obsessed with AI-wearables? first the Rabbit, then the Humane pin, now this? We already have phones that listen to us 24/7, why do they think anyone wants another thing to lug around?

Oh, I’m fully aware. It just boggles the mind how the same tired outlook has endured for decades now.