A new AI wearable called Friend uses an always-on microphone to eavesdrop on your life. The goal? To become the friend you didn’t know you needed.
Avi Schiffmann needed a friend. The technology developer was traveling solo in Japan and feeling the isolation. Schiffmann, who rose to fame when he created a popular COVID-tracking website at age 17, had spent the past few years bouncing from one successful project to the next. While in Japan, he was deep in the process of building Tab, a new kind of wearable tech device that uses artificial intelligence to have knowing and personally contextual conversations with its wearers. While traveling, his project took a turn from the productivity-leaning zeitgeist of AI technology to a more esoteric, emotional state. “I was in a high-rise skyscraper in Tokyo, alone. And I was like, ‘I hate this.’ And it’s not only that I just wanted to talk to someone. I wanted someone to really just be there with me while I was traveling,” Schiffmann says.
