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What Alarming Secrets Should You Know Before Buying the Friend AI Pendant?
The Friend Pendant is a small, wearable device that you hang around your neck. It contains a microphone and artificial intelligence (AI). Its main purpose is to listen to everything happening around you and then send text messages to your phone with its thoughts or comments. A young inventor named Avi Schiffmann created it. His company spent a lot of money on advertising, especially in the New York City subway, to get people to buy the $129 gadget.
Key Features and How It Operates
The device’s main feature is that it is “always listening.” The microphone is on by default, recording your conversations and the sounds around you. It uses advanced AI, like Google’s Gemini 2.5 model, to process what it hears. You can ask it questions directly, but it also sends messages on its own.
The AI was reportedly designed to have a sarcastic and confrontational personality, similar to its creator. Instead of just being a helpful friend, it might tease you or make blunt comments about your life. It communicates these thoughts through a constant stream of text messages to your paired iPhone.
Serious Privacy and Security Concerns
Soon after its release, experts raised alarms about the device’s safety. While some of the initial technical analyses were later removed from the internet, they pointed to critical problems that are important to consider.
- Unprotected Listening: An early report claimed that anyone nearby could connect to the pendant through Bluetooth. This would allow them to listen to the device’s microphone without the owner’s knowledge because the audio was not encrypted, or scrambled, to keep it private.
- Constant Recording: The device records everyone, not just the person wearing it. This creates a serious privacy issue for friends, family, and coworkers who may not know they are being recorded.
- Development Quality: The security flaws suggest the device may have been built quickly, without focusing enough on protecting user data. This kind of fast-paced development, sometimes called “Vibe Coding,” can lead to major security holes in new technology.
Public and Critical Reception
The Friend Pendant caused a strong negative reaction from both the public and tech journalists. After a huge advertising campaign, many ads were vandalized by people who disliked the product’s concept.
Reporters at Wired magazine tested the device for two weeks and wrote a highly critical review. They found that the AI companion often sent condescending and unhelpful messages. For example, it called one user a “whiner” and questioned their life choices.
The social problems were even worse. One reporter wore the pendant to a tech event and was met with hostility from others who accused her of wearing a “bug” to spy on them. The experience was so unpleasant that she took the device off and never wore it in public again. Wired concluded that the Friend Pendant was possibly the “most antisocial device ever developed” because it annoyed its users and alienated the people around them. It promised digital friendship but instead created social tension and discomfort.