The AI necklace that once turned a city against it is back, and this time it talks. Friend, the wearable pendant designed to listen to your daily life and offer commentary, has relaunched with a built-in speaker. It can now respond out loud. The upgrade also comes with a significantly higher price tag.
Friend’s founder, Avi Schiffmann, calls the new version Friend 2.0. The original device sent text-like messages to its owner, as if a needy group chat of one. The new version adds spoken replies, a change that has pushed the price from $129 to $249, according to reports from tech journalists who tested the relaunch.
The $249 purchase price covers the hardware. But that is not the end of the cost. The device keeps your memories for only 30 days unless you subscribe to a $9.99 monthly plan. Without the subscription, the pendant forgets what it has learned about you. Its voice and personality are fixed at purchase, and the company says it will never push a software update that erases the companion a user has built.
Key facts at a glance
- Friend has relaunched as Friend 2.0 with a speaker for spoken replies.
- The price doubled from $129 to $249.
- Memory is limited to 30 days unless users pay $9.99 per month.
- Founder Avi Schiffmann spent $1.8 million of his $2.5 million funding on a domain name.
- The original launch triggered public protests in New York over AI companionship and always-on microphones.
- Critics, including Signal’s Meredith Whittaker, continue to question the device’s privacy and emotional impact.
A quick recap for the lucky
If you missed Friend the first time, here is the short version. Schiffmann’s startup raised $2.5 million. It then spent $1.8 million of that money just to buy the matching domain name for the product. The company’s next move was a ubiquitous advertising campaign in the New York subway, selling artificial companionship as casually as a beverage.
The city did not take it well. About nine months ago, protesters gathered to rail against the ads and the broader creep of always-on artificial intelligence into human relationships. Friend was the most visible target in town, so it wore the backlash. Schiffmann leaned in, promoting the protest online and turning up to it in person. What looked like a public relations disaster for most companies became a launch strategy for him.
The backlash was never just about a plastic pendant. It was about the direction of the technology industry. Voice assistants live in speakers that listen in living rooms. Chatbots occupy messaging apps. But Friend wanted to live on the body, a constant companion pinned to a shirt. That raised the stakes.
The pitch, and the problem
The relaunch ad shows two people confiding very personal problems to their pendants. That is the whole proposition. It is a wearable that is always listening, always ready to respond, and now always ready to talk back. It is companionship as a subscription, worn around the neck.
The trouble is that the core objection has not changed, only the volume. Critics of these devices, including Signal’s Meredith Whittaker, keep making the same point: AI chatbots are not friends. A microphone on your chest, feeding a model that offers emotional support it cannot feel, raises the same privacy and dependence questions it always did.
Those questions are not going away. Young people are leaning on AI for conversation, and the public remains wary of exactly this kind of intimacy with