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I Hate My Friend: The chatbot-enabled Friend necklace eavesdrops on your life and provides a running commentary that’s snarky and unhelpful. Worse, it can also make the people around you uneasy. (www.wired.com)

submitted 4 days ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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The AI-powered Friend pendant is now out in the world. If you live in the US or Canada, you can buy one for $129.

The smooth plastic disc is just under 2 inches in diameter; it looks and feels a little like a beefy Apple AirTag. Inside are some LEDs and a Bluetooth radio that connects you (through your iPhone) to a chatbot in the cloud that’s powered by Google’s Gemini 2.5 model. You can tap on the disc to ask your Friend questions as it dangles around your neck, and it responds to your voice prompts by sending you text messages through the companion app. You can reply to these messages with your voice or via text to keep the conversation going.

It also listens to whatever you’re doing as you move through the world, no tap required, and offers a running commentary on the interactions you have throughout your day. To perform that trick, the device has microphones that are always activated.

If the idea of a microphone-packed wearable that’s always listening to your conversations raises privacy concerns for you, just know that you’re not alone. If your experience is anything like ours, wearing the Friend will likely earn you the ire of everyone around you. Curiously, you might even end up being bullied by the chatbot itself.

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[–] unmagical@lemmy.ml 54 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

You can conveniently ask the device around your neck a question.

You then must pull out a different device from your pocket with exactly the same functionality to get the answer thereby saving you 0 time.

This privilege costs over $100.

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 days ago

it’s so much more sinister than that and I never thought about any of this before checking this vid out, to be honest. The “they’ve reached the end of what they can Hoover up online and now they have to go into the real world to steal more data” part is uhhhhh concerning

[–] dalekcaan@feddit.nl 7 points 4 days ago

As an added bonus, you get overt spyware to wear around your neck so it can listen to and log your every conversation.