"The company's latest gizmo, a necklace designed to constantly listen to you via a microphone and send snarky AI slop texts to your smartphone, has proven immensely controversial, leading to an outpouring of criticism."
""Nobody who has friends needs an AI companion to chat with while enhancing the capacity of the surveillance state to a degree that would make George Orwell drink a jar of room temperature mercury," NYC-based standup comedian Josh Gondelman wrote in a tongue-in-cheek "pep talk" aimed at the device. "And anyone without existing human friends arguably needs you even less.""
""I know people in New York hate AI, and things like AI companionship and wearables, probably more than anywhere else in the country," he told Adweek. "So I bought more ads than anyone has ever done with a lot of white space so that they would socially comment on the topic.""
A wearable device from startup Friend — a $129 necklace that continually listens via microphone and sends AI-generated texts to users — provoked a fierce public backlash in New York City. Subway ads for the product were rapidly defaced with graffiti condemning AI companionship and surveillance. Civil liberties groups warned that recordings could be accessed by hackers, private companies, or the government. The company's CEO said he left white space on ads to invite social commentary, and the ad campaign cost over $1 million. Critics also raised concerns about the hardware's quality and privacy implications.
Read at Futurism
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