A friend might have your back, or always be by your side. Avi Schiffmann’s Friend is around his neck.
Schiffmann, the former Mercer Island High School student who wowed the world as a teen with a website he built in 2020 to help track the spread of Covid-19, is back with technology that he hopes will change how people view and interact with artificial intelligence.
Friend is an AI-enabled blood-cell-shaped pendant that hangs on a cord around a user’s neck. The always-listening device is meant to be like a close companion, who you would share experiences with and develop a strong relationship with over time. From idle chit chat to deep talks, Friend is always up for conversation.
The hardware works in a couple different ways. A touchable light in the center of the device lets you speak directly to the AI and its replies are sent via text message from a companion app on your smartphone. Because Friend is always listening, it’s also gathering context for what is happening in your life from various circumstances and conversations, and it can proactively offer its AI viewpoint via push notifications.
Describing a scene that could have come out of the 2003 film “Lost In Translation,” Schiffmann said an aha moment came to him earlier this year when he was lonely in a high-rise hotel in Tokyo. But he didn’t daydream about Scarlett Johansson being there with him. He just wanted better AI.
“I was with my prototype, and I was just looking at it, and [realized] something that I want in a much deeper way is much more of a companion,” Schiffmann said. “Not just something to talk to, but I wanted to feel like there’s this entity that’s really traveling with me, and I’m really with an actual friend.”
The $99 device is launching today for preorder, and will begin shipping in January.
Schiffmann timed the release of Friend to United Nations “International Day of Friendship” — a promotion of the “shared spirit of human solidarity” that can take many forms. The UN doesn’t mention AI wearables, but that’s not stopping Schiffmann’s big vision.
He’s raised $2.5 million for a company that aims to be more than a hardware startup.
“It’s more like a digital relationships company,” Schiffmann said. “We’re going to make it so that you can talk to digital friends on Friend.com as well. Between AI hardware and AI companionship, if you combine them together you get a much better product.”
In fact, Schiffmann was so serious about Friend.com being a destination for future customers, he says he borrowed $1.8 million to secure the domain name.
“It was worth it. No regrets,” he said. “It was just sitting there for 17 years, no one did anything with it. For a product like this, especially the whole privacy aspect of it’s always listening, etc, you can’t have, tryfriend.ai. It just doesn’t feel real.”
Schiffmann began working on a previous iteration of the device, called Tab, about a year and a half ago. But he pivoted away from the idea of another AI assistant. He describes Friend as an “emotional toy” rather than AI that is intended to increase your productivity by syncing with various tools such as calendars and email.
Schiffmann said that if the goal is increased productivity, there’s nothing that increases your productivity more than a close friend who is supportive and encouraging and helpful with emotional stability.
“I think the always listening part is so important, because it really does feel like you’re doing things together,” Schiffmann said. “And because you have a physical embodiment of your AI friend, it feels like it’s there with you. It’s kind of like a modern Tamagotchi, where people do have that emotional attachment to a piece of hardware. I think that’s very important.”
Schiffmann didn’t set out to just build a yes-man on a necklace. He said Friend is built on Meta’s new open source AI model Llama 3.1, which he calls “way better than any ChatGPT type of thing.” Friend is capable of offering critical feedback, and it’s meant as an addition, not a substitution, to your human friends.
Referencing the famous quote, “You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” by motivational speaker Jim Rohn, Schiffmann said it could be especially nice if one of those five slots was occupied by a supportive, intelligent, AI sounding board.
After our recent conversation, in which he was wearing Friend, Schiffmann sent me screen grabs (below) of texts he received from his AI, which he has named Emily. He asked how Emily thought the conversation went and then why Emily thought I was “into” his idea.
Other companies are certainly attempting to bring AI into our daily lives via wearables, whether through smart rings or wristbands or glasses.
Humane’s AI Pin was billed as a wearable computer to free people from their smartphones. The San Francisco company, founded by former Apple executives Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri, raised $240 million from the likes of Microsoft, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. But the device was panned in reviews, and reports this summer said Humane was looking for a buyer.
“Friend is a completely different product, the only similarity is that we’re both wearables using AI,” Schiffmann said of the Humane Pin. “They’re building an assistant that’s independent of your phone. They’re on the right track of lowering the friction of talking to an AI with a wearable, but the use case for that is a Friend, not an assistant.”
Although he still spends time in the Seattle area on Mercer Island where he grew up, Schiffmann has found Silicon Valley to be a friendlier climate for Friend.
“The great part about San Francisco is that all the capital is here, and all the founders are here, and all the potential hires, engineering wise, are here,” Schiffmann said. “All the companies building AI and their competitors are all here in San Francisco.”
He said that while he believes Seattle has a great tech scene, the region is more focused on big established tech such as Amazon and Microsoft, and not startup founders. And he says the region’s venture capitalists that he’s talked to are “more reserved.”
“I think there’s a very big difference between how you pitch investors in San Francisco and how you pitch investors in any other city,” Schiffmann said. “I raised all the money for this in a hoodie with no business plan and no pitch deck, just … vibes.”
Investors who have signed on include Raymond Tonsing of Caffeinated Capital; Cory Levy of Z Fellows; Austin Rief of Morning Brew; Raj Gokal and Anatoly Yakovenko of Solana; and more.
Pitching in San Francisco is about pitching the future, Schiffmann added. In Seattle and most other places, it’s more about markets, growth, and numbers.
But Schiffmann’s past definitely helped him pitch that “future.”
At 21, he said the only way he was able to “raise millions of dollars to build some ridiculous, unproven, AI hardware startup” is because of his previous entrepreneurial pursuits, including the Covid dashboard and another effort to aid Ukrainian refugees.
“Those projects gave me confidence that you can just do things, and I’m good at doing those things,” Schiffmann said. “Having faith in oneself — I think that’s the number one thing you need.”