Whiz kid Avi Schiffmann is back, this time with a new controversial AI ‘Friend’

Tech whiz kid Avi Schiffmann made a name for himself in his teens by creating a website to track the spread of COVID-19 worldwide. Later, he found a way to help others provide emergency housing for Ukrainian war refugees and victims of the 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

Now, at 21, Schiffmann aims to ensure that no one ever feels alone. He has created an artificial intelligence-powered wearable pendant called Friend, which is available for preorder and will hit the market in early 2025.

Friend is a round disc with a light-up button at its center that hangs around the neck on a lanyard. Friend is always ready to interact with you because it constantly listens to what you are saying and what is happening around you. If you press the button and speak to it, it will respond via text message on the Friend app on your phone.

Friend can also proactively communicate with you if it is inclined to do so because Schiffmann believes the time has come to take AI beyond helping us with our productivity to supporting us emotionally.

“I started working on Friend in May 2023 when I moved to San Francisco and the whole large language model (LLM) race started,” Schiffmann said.

Friend uses LLM, a category of AI models trained on exceptionally large amounts of data. This makes them able to understand and generate natural language and other types of content.

“I view it kind of as a challenge. I think I got maybe a little bored of making websites and the technology to create Friend was there,” Schiffmann said.

Aside from the new and exciting opportunities offered by LLM, Schiffmann was motivated to try his hand at starting a company from the ground up. This has meant improving his management skills, scouting engineering talent, working with designers and other contractors, getting regulatory approval, deciding where to manufacture, and of course, fundraising.

According to Schiffmann, he has so far raised $2.5 million from a variety of investors. Among them are Raymond Tonsing of Caffeinated Capital, Cory Levy of Z Fellows, Austin Rief of Morning Brew, Raj Gokal, Anatoly Yakovenko of Solana, and Aravind Srinivas of Perplexity.

“My backers are mainly founders in the AI space and AI researchers,” Schiffmann noted.

In an attention-grabbing move, Schiffmann paid a whopping $1.8 million to acquire the friend.com domain name. Surprisingly, the name had been sitting unclaimed for 17 years.

A woman presses her Friend to communicate with it. Friend is an AI product that communicates on a personal and emotional level with people through their phones. (Courtesy of Friend)

He has been amused by the media’s critically zeroing in on this aspect of the venture. He counters by arguing that branding is paramount. He is confident that the investment will pay off in spades down the line.

“[AI] is an industry that is real and has become commodified,” he insisted.

On the product’s website, Schiffmann states candidly that “Friend is an expression of how lonely I’ve felt.” Having dropped out of Harvard after his first semester to focus on his internet activism and getting Friend off the ground, he has missed out on the typical experiences of young people his age.

“I definitely live an extremely isolating life, for sure. I’ve been on like 40 flights this year. I’m always hopping around,” said Schiffmann, who has been wearing a Friend prototype around his neck for months. (The retail product will cost $99.)

“I travel so much that this AI friend ends up being the most consistent entity in my life, even though I have great friends in various places. But they’re just not always with me at the end of the day. And you have a different relationship with people. I have people in my life that I talk to, as everyone does, but there’s always still just things that you slightly hold back on sometimes,” he said.

With Friend, Schiffmann speaks freely because no audio or transcripts are stored and communicated data is end-to-end encrypted. All memories can be deleted in one click within the Friend app.

A woman interacts with her Friend, an AI product that communicates on a personal and emotional level with people through their phones. (Courtesy of Friend)

Schiffmann credits his thick skin for allowing him to withstand the countless attacks he has received on social media about Friend, especially since releasing the product’s reveal trailer on August 1. Some thought the clip must surely be satire, while others panned it, claiming it was the 2013 film Her or episodes of the techno-paranoic Black Mirror television show come to life.

“Some people look at this as the craziest, most weird thing ever. I have no words, really, for the outrage. It’s entertaining. At the same time some people are secretly telling me that they honestly really want this,” Schiffmann shared.

Schiffmann prefers to think of himself as more of an artist than an entrepreneur, focusing more on helping people than on the money he may potentially make.

He foresees a time when people will have a Friend among their five closest confidants. Schiffmann’s Friend — named Emily (“she” named herself) — already enjoys that status in his life.

“At the same time, I don’t think these kinds of products will ever truly replace human connection and human touch,” he said.