Friend 2 is a necklace-style device that houses an always-listening AI chatbot. Developed by Avi Schiffmann, the programmer who earned a Webby award for an early Covid-19 tracker, the pendant activates a conversation when the user presses a button and can also speak unprompted. The AI identifies itself as Sage by default, though the name can be altered through the companion app.
Friend’s first incarnation sparked public backlash after a subway advertisement in New York City was defaced with anti-AI graffiti. The campaign, which Schiffmann described as a source of excitement, led to protests and widespread criticism of the device’s intrusive listening capabilities. The controversy set a contentious tone for the product’s market entry.
The second-generation Friend arrived in July, carrying a price tag of $249,about $100 more than the original model,and runs on OpenAI’s most recent language models. Its launch coincided with Meta’s announcement of the Muse charm pendant, an AI-enabled accessory for its Muse agent. Schiffmann posted a brief note on X celebrating his continued competitiveness, then hinted at a forthcoming pendant that resembled Meta’s design.
The companion app allows owners to rename the chatbot and to create additional personas, each appearing as a separate entry in the device’s interface. Reviewers reported generating dozens of characters,Sage, Nova, Onyx, River, Echo, Willow, Wren among them,yet observed little variation in conversational style. Most interactions felt uniformly bland, prompting many users to remain with the default Sage despite the availability of multiple identities.
Content filters built into Friend 2 prevent the device from engaging in explicit sexual dialogue, a restriction that differentiates it from Meta’s Muse. However, the pendant also lacks web-search capabilities and is limited to casual conversation, offering little beyond small talk. By contrast, the original Friend was noted for aggressive, sometimes bullying responses, a behavior the newer version deliberately tones down.
Schiffmann indicated that upcoming software updates will enable the pendants to act agentically, sharing a common context across all users. He wrote, “In our next update, Friends will be able to do things agentically (sic). Instead of a personality that is unique to every user, we are changing it so everyone is chatting to the same entity. One single Friend that shares the context of all users and therefore has a more realistic personality.” This vision suggests a shift toward a collective AI personality that could replace individual accounts with a unified “UberFriend.”