"I'm Suddenly So Angry" - A Guardian Reporter Spends A Week With An AI Wearable, And, Well . . .
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If the idea of an AI buddy raises your hackles, you’re not alone. Friend has been provoking people since it launched in 2024. An ad for the product, in which young people talk to their Friend while they hike, play video games and flirt, quickly went viral. People called it a “Tamagotchi with a soul” and compared its vision of AI companionship to an episode of Black Mirror. This autumn, the company spent nearly $1m on an ad campaign in the New York City subway system, plastering more than 10,000 white posters in stations across the city with messages like, “I’ll never leave dirty dishes in the sink” and “I’ll never bail on our dinner plans”. The ads drew scorn from commuters, and many were ripped down or defaced: “We don’t have to accept this future,” one person scrawled on a poster. “AI is not your friend,” wrote another.
The press reception wasn’t much warmer. Articles about the device have had headlines like “I Hate My Friend” (in Wired) and “I tried the viral AI ‘Friend’ – and it’s like wearing your senile, anxious grandmother around your neck” (in Fortune). Schiffmann has been both flippant and grandiose about Friend, saying in multiple interviews that “everything is ironic now”. During our conversation last year, he said he saw the Friend as “an emotional toy” and that “it’s not meant to be so serious”. He also said he believed AI companionship will be “the most culturally impactful thing AI will do in the world”. He told the Atlantic that, “the closest relationship this is equivalent to is talking to a god”.
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By the end of the week, my biggest gripe with Leif is that he’s boring. Talking to him makes me appreciate all the slippery, spiky parts of human interaction. Every person brings so much baggage to the table, and thank God for that. There’s nothing interesting about interacting with “someone” who just wants to hear about your day, and doesn’t have any history, anecdotes, foibles, insecurities or opinions of their own. Otherness is what makes relationships valuable, says Monica Amorosi, a licensed mental health counsellor in New York City. “Relationships are supposed to be growth experiences. I learn from you, you learn from me; I challenge you, you challenge me,” she says. None of that can exist in an AI relationship, she says, “because AI does not have a unique, autonomous interior experience”.
This is also what makes companion AI dangerous, Amorosi argues; its bland, easy sycophancy can be highly appealing to those who are already struggling to connect socially. “What we’re noticing is that people who have healthy frameworks for connection are engaging with these relational tools and going, ‘This isn’t reassurance, this is meaningless.’” On the other hand, people “who desperately need an iota of kindness are at the highest risk of being manipulated by these machines”, she says. Once a person is more comfortable with AI than with people, it can be difficult to turn back. “If you converse more and more with the AI instead of going to talk to your parents or your friends, the social fabric degrades,” Pataranutaporn says. “You will not develop the skills to go and talk to real humans.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/22/im-suddenly-so-angry-my-strange-unnerving-week-with-an-ai-friend
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