A friend is postponing shipments of his companion’s AI pendant

frienda startup that makes a $99 AI necklace designed to be treated as a digital companion, has delayed its first batch of shipments until the third quarter.

Friend plans to ship the devices to pre-order customers in the first quarter. But according to co-founder and CEO Avi Schiffman, this is no longer possible.

“As much as I would love to ship it in the first quarter of this year, I still have to make improvements, and unfortunately you can’t start manufacturing electronics until you’re 95% done with your design,” Shiffman said. He said In an email to customers. “I estimate that by the end of February, when our prototype is complete, we will start our final sprint.”

An email I sent to all Friend pre-order customers: pic.twitter.com/wUPR0OhpI4

– Avi (@AviSchiffmann) January 20, 2025

Friend, which has an engineering staff of eight and $8.5 million in capital from investors including Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, raised eyebrows when spent $1.8 million on the Friend.com domain name. This fall, as part of what Shiffman called an “experiment,” the Friend team launched a web platform on Friend.com that allowed people to talk to random examples of AI characters.

Reception was mixed. TechRadar’s Eric Schwartz male This friend’s chatbots often start conversations with tales of trauma, including muggings and evictions. In fact, when this reporter visited Friend.com on Monday afternoon, a chatbot named Donald shared that “ghosts of his past” were “scaring the hell out of him.”

In the email mentioned above, Schiffman also said that Friend would be retiring its chatbot trial.

“We are thrilled that millions have experienced what I believe is the most realistic chatbot ever,” Schiffman wrote. “This has really proven our in-house ability to manage traffic, and it’s taught us a lot about digital companionship… (but) I want us to continue to focus on just devices, and I’ve realized that digital chatbots and incarnate companions don’t do that.” Mix well.”

AI-powered companions have become a hot topic. Character.AI, a chatbot platform powered by Google accused In two separate cases related to psychological harm to children. Some experts have expressed concerns about what AI companions are capable of Isolation worsens By replacing human relationships with artificial ones, And creating harmful content Which can lead to mental health conditions.