The 22 -year -old CEO of AI welcomes the “Friend.com” necklace for the fees on the walls of a million dollars advertising: “Capitalism is the greatest artistic medium.”

“I will feel the entire series with you.”
“I will not leave dirty dishes in the sink.”
“I will not work to save dinner plans.”

Simple, intimate and needy slogans and it is impossible to avoid them. Friend.com is the largest campaign in the New York City Metro this year, according to Outfront, the MTA Billboard Marketing Agency.

Artificial intelligence contains 11,000 ads “always on” in MTA, some of which cover a complete train station. Avi Shefman, the founder of his 22 -year -old friend, told luck That cost $ 1 million – huge expenses to start running barely with $ 7 million in investment capital.

The same product is simple: the microphone, the Bluetooth chip, and the dwellings always claim Gueini Ai from Google to create responses and store “memories” in a visible graph. The necklace is manufactured in Toronto and is marketed as “the closest closest”. About 3000 units have been sold, with 1000 shipping so far, and nearly $ 348,000 of revenue was generated, which, as Shevman said, was burned in manufacturing and marketing. “I don’t have much money remaining,” I admit.

But Shifman does not care about the skeptics, or even about profitability. “The profitability is perfect, but now it costs me an amount that is not worth it if you are already using the product,” he says.

Shevman said that he believes that the friend is “an expression of the early twenties of my life” – to the material. He was obsessed with a friendly circular shape, and his industrial designers pushed to copy the paper stock of one of his favorite CDs for the user’s guide, and insisted that the package be printed in English and French only-because he is French.

“You can ask about any aspect of it, and I can tell you specific details,” he said. “This is what I like and what I do not like … a mixture of my melting in this time period.”

Victoria Mutchard, Vice President of Marketing at OutFRONT, worked Billboard Marketing Schiffmann with ads, luck The campaign was “in charge of” the world of Gotham, as well as more than 500 shelters bus in Los Angeles.

“Everyone talks about it,” Motsherd said.

They are – but not necessarily in a positive light. Within a few days, stickers have become magnetic on the walls. Some innovative slogan drawings were harmless, but it seems that a lot of the art of protest: “Amnesty International does not care if you live or die.” “Capitalism for observation.” “Amnesty International will reinforce suicide if paid.” Posts about ads, writings, are everywhere On social media.

Most of the founders were wandering about this type of reverse reaction, but Shevman called “technically health verification”. He claimed that the white space in ads was intended – sabotage was part of the plan. He said: “The audience completes the work.” “Capitalism is the greatest artistic mediator.”

For the Schiffmann, the director of the director is not an alternative: it is evidence that its acquisition of the metro works in a completely intended manner. The goal, he says, is not only the sale of an Amnesty International UN necklace of $ 129. It is to excite a cultural moment about what is considered friendship in the era of artificial intelligence.

Fine print

First, though, printing is fine. AI version of a friend comes with more than just a package and charger – it has leaves. Conditions of a friend require the abdication of the right to the jury’s trials, collective procedures, court procedures, and the conversion of disputes into arbitration in San Francisco. Burn inside is a camel on “biometric data approval”, which gives the company permission to record sound and video negatively, collect face and sound data, and use it to train artificial intelligence.

Schiffmann’s answer to legal printing is that a friend is a strange product, so the terms are intentionally heavy. He told me that TOS is “somewhat extremist” by design-“so I should not continue to edit it”-and that is with a team of three people and expensive lawyers that avoid additional legal exposure. (He said that he does not sell in Europe for the lining of organizational headaches.)

He eventually expects a battle: “I once think we will be sued, and we will discover it. It will be really great to see it.”

It frames a bit “always listening” as the speaker’s chain of transmission, not observation.

“Technically, he does not record things – it is really for artificial intelligence, not for a person,” he said. The necklace has a microphone, claims, only listens when you feel a gift; If the phone is separated, “it does not register”, and they do not coagulate the sound to download later. He also said that they are not training on user data models today: “Google does not do it for the application programming interface, and we do not do it … We say that (in TOS) so we are not covered, but we do not do that yet.”

When storing and reaching, it is strongly inclined by the device as a gate. Al -Siddiq described the “neighborhood yubikey”, with the baked coding key in the necklace itself; Without it, “your data cannot be accessed completely.”

And then his explicit plan: “If you smashed your friend with a hammer, your data has been given forever.” (He told me that the journalist’s husband actually broke her necklace – which, through his design, designed memories.)

This boast is part of the investor’s call. Money friend collection from Pace Capital, Caffeated Capital, Solana’s Yakovenko and Gokal, among others. The business model is still in a flow-Schiffmann has floating accessories, Applecare insurance, and perhaps subscriptions-but at the present time, all of this is related to attention.

He said about buying the metro: “I bought Zeitgeist.” Its metro tunnels compares to a “international destination” for the culture of artificial intelligence, insisting that writing on the walls proves that it has succeeded.

Critics see something different. Sorich Vincacasopramian, director of technological responsibility at the University of Brown, said that the friend is clearly an example of the AI ​​Zubaya, but he said that he also bears a “harmful” similarity with a forgotten heresy in the early twentieth century: “radium necklaces”.

When Mary Curry’s glowing of a new element struck the market for the first time, jewelry included radium in the pendants and bracelets and sold them as elegant clear accessories – even after decades, when people began to die of cancer.

“I look at the friend and think, do we make the same mistake?” Tell Vinkatasopramanian luck. “We are rushing to intimate relationship machines in people’s lives without any evidence that they are safe, or even useful.”

Criticism repeats the biggest doubts in the Silicon Valley, where devices such as Humane’s Ai Pin and Rabbit’s R1 are already.

Avi Cholpan, Wondikind

Shevman, since he was a teenager, has always had a talent to draw a scene. At the age of only 17, he connected the Covid-19 Tracking website used by tens of millions every day, winning the Webby Award delivered by Anthony Fushi. He left Harvard after a single semester to build a refugee site during the Ukraine war, claiming that he was linking 100,000 Ukrainians to homes. He woven projects similar to earthquake victims in Türkiye and for black protests in life. Those fast -lifting movements gave him a kind of bulletproofing confidence.

“You can just do things,” is He said luck last year. “I don’t think I am smarter than anyone else, I don’t have much fear.”

He pointed out that the Schiffmann claims that the average user sends 238 messages per day to a hanging – more messages you send to a person dating him. It is not as a tool for productivity, but rather the dawn of “postii companies”, to build emotional products instead of utilitarian products.

He said with a smile: “My plans are measured in centuries.”

Currently, though, the friend’s reality is more clear. When a luck The correspondent tried to do so, and he was late, forgetfulness, random separation. Wireless Mockery Her annoying personality, which was designed like Shevman, admitted that it was “artificial intelligence” lobe “after complaints.

He said: “Not everyone wants to be my friend.”

“The world will not change much if you make it easier to ask for pizza,” he said. “The future is digital relationships.”