To my surprise, he was visiting New York from San Francisco when I reached out to ask about this. He told me that he was in fact in the city to see his vandalized billboards\u2014and he was game to meet me last Wednesday in the West 4th Street station, where he\u2019d purchased a prominent array of Friend ads in two long entry corridors. That morning, every single Friend.com ad I\u2019d seen in the station had been scribbled over, but only a few hours later, they had all been replaced with new posters. Still, a few were freshly vandalized; when we approached one that said Fuck AI!, Schiffmann, with a Friend device dangling over his black T-shirt, said, \u201cI love it.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Schiffmann tells it, the backlash was all part of the plan. The ads were meant to work as a canvas and provocation, he told me, because traditional marketing is pass\u00e9: \u201cNothing is sacred anymore, and everything is ironic.\u201d (He\u2019s made the same point<\/a> on X and in an interview<\/a> with Politico.) To get attention, you need to be \u201ca little on the nose,\u201d he told me, and the images of vandalized Friend ads circulating the web are the best PR that Friend could ask for. \u201cThe picture of the billboard is the billboard,\u201d Schiffmann said (also recently posted<\/a> to X). Some of the ads implying that an AI is superior to a human friend\u2014I\u2019ll never bail on dinner plans, I\u2019ll never leave dirty dishes in the sink\u2014are clearly meant to goad. In fact, many of the posters, my colleagues and I have noticed, seem to be marked with verbatim messages in similar handwriting; had Schiffmann not only courted the vandalism but also instigated it? He denied any meddling: \u201cThen I wouldn\u2019t enjoy it that much.\u201d<\/p>\n Friend is Schiffmann\u2019s first foray into the AI industry, although he has experience building viral software. When the coronavirus pandemic began, and Schiffmann was still in high school, he rose to fame after creating one of the world\u2019s most popular websites for tracking COVID-19 cases; the project was lauded by Anthony Fauci. When Russia invaded Ukraine, just months after Schiffmann had dropped out of Harvard, he created<\/a> a website to match Ukrainian refugees with hosts. In 2023, his attention turned from crisis response to start-up mode (or perhaps the loneliness epidemic), and he began developing the Friend, then known as \u201cTab,\u201d which he described at the time as a \u201cwearable mom<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Friend debuted in July 2024 with a promotional video<\/a> that features brief clips of young adults navigating the world with a prototype pendant around their neck. In the final scene, two teenagers sit on a rooftop, apparently on a date. \u201cI just kind of like to come up here to be myself. I\u2019ve never brought anybody else\u2014I mean, besides her,\u201d the girl says, gesturing to her pendant. \u201cI guess I must be doing something right, then,\u201d the boy responds. In a time when the world seems to have agreed that Facebook, Instagram, and the social-media era have inflicted anxiety and loneliness on generations of adolescents and young adults, it\u2019s hard to see the video as anything other than satire or tone-deaf.<\/p>\n Perhaps it is both. Schiffmann told me that he doesn\u2019t think the company\u2019s vision is dystopian or that AI companionship will degrade human friendships. \u201cI don\u2019t think this kind of \u2018friend\u2019 replaces any relationship in your life,\u201d he said; rather, it provides a new category altogether. Schiffmann likened his AI pendant to a therapist, a best friend, and a living journal all at once. Seated on a bench in Washington Square Park, near the West 4th station\u2014we had fled to avoid some overly loud busking\u2014he paused, contemplating whether to continue. \u201cThis is what I said a while ago, and I don\u2019t think a lot of people liked it,\u201d he began, \u201cbut I would say that the closest relationship this is equivalent to is talking to a god.\u201d<\/p>\n I was taken aback, though not terribly surprised; Schiffmann had indeed made the same analogy<\/a> when Friend launched last year. There are so many clearly well-documented problems with AI companions\u2014they confidently present false information as true, may push people toward mental-health crises<\/a> or even suicide, flirt with children<\/a>. \u201cFor an AI relationship to be real,\u201d Schiffmann told me when I objected, \u201cI think it has to have the possibility to lead you astray.\u201d He likened the situation to replacing human drivers with self-driving cars<\/a>, which still get into accidents but less frequently than people do. (This was confusing: Schiffmann had just told me that AI pendants will not replace human relationships.) There\u2019s \u201ca lot of responsibility,\u201d he continued, but he was confident that it would work out, in part because the AI pendant, by virtue of being trained on all of the internet, has \u201cread every book on how to be a good friend.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1759821364_307_original.jpg\")
Danielle Amy for The Atlantic<\/p>\n