Friends$99, designed to act as a digital companion; A startup that creates an AI-powered necklace has postponed its first batch of shipments until Q3.
Friend plans to ship the devices to pre-orders in Q1. But according to co-founder and CEO Avi Schiffman, that's no longer possible.
“As much as we'd like to ship in Q1 of this year, there's still some modifications, unfortunately you can't start manufacturing electronics until you're 95% done with your design,” Schiffman. He said. An email to customers. “Once our prototype is complete, we estimate that we will be able to begin our final run by the end of February.”
An email sent to friends booking customers: pic.twitter.com/wUPR0OhpI4
— Avi (@AviSchiffmann) January 20 2025
Friend, who has $8.5 million in seed funding from investors including Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas and a staff of eight engineers, raised eyebrows at the time. spent. This fall, as part of what Schiffman called an “experiment,” $1.8 million in the domain name Friend.com, Friend debuted a web platform on Friend.com that lets people talk to random samples of AI characters.
The reception was mixed. TechRadar's Eric Schwartz noted. Those friend chatbots often started conversations with the aftermath of trauma, including muggings and shootings. Indeed, When this reporter visited Friend.com on Monday afternoon, A chatbot named Donald shared that “the ghosts of (his) past” “freaked him out.”
In the above email, Schiffman also said Friend will discontinue its chatbot experience.
“I'm excited to have millions play with what I believe is the most practical chatbot out there,” Schiffman wrote. “It really proved our internal ability to manage traffic, and it taught me a lot about digital companionship… (but) I wanted to stay focused on the hardware, and I realized that digital chatbots and virtual companions don't. Blend well.”
AI-powered companions have become a hot topic. Character.AI is a chatbot platform backed by Google. Accused. Two separate lawsuits alleging emotional harm to children. Some experts have expressed the possibility of AI companions. It makes the isolation worse. By replacing human relationships with artificial ones. Create harmful content. That can be detrimental to mental health.