Focus Keyword: Friend.com AI companion
If you’ve taken the subway in New York City lately, you’ve probably seen it: stark white posters with black text declaring, “friend, noun: someone who listens, responds, and supports you.” Below, a sleek pendant glows like a promise—or a warning. This is the Friend.com AI companion, a $129 wearable that claims to be your new best friend. And it’s not just an ad campaign—it’s become a lightning rod for our deepest anxieties about artificial intelligence, loneliness, and what it even means to connect.
Table of Contents
- What Is Friend.com?
- The Subway Takeover That Broke the Internet
- Public Backlash: From Graffiti to Digital Vandalism
- The Founder’s Defense: Art, Innovation, or Exploitation?
- What This Says About Our Relationship with AI
What Is Friend.com?
Founded by 22-year-old tech entrepreneur Avi Schiffmann—known for building a global Covid-19 tracker at 18 and a refugee-hosting platform during the Ukraine war—Friend.com launched its wearable AI pendant in July 2025. The device listens to your conversations, responds in real time, and aims to provide emotional support. Think of it as a pocket-sized confidant that never cancels plans or judges you.
But calling it a “friend” is precisely what’s ruffling feathers.
The Subway Takeover That Broke the Internet
In late August 2025, Friend.com unleashed one of the boldest ad campaigns in recent memory: a near-total visual takeover of New York City’s subway system. For under $1 million, Schiffmann blanketed stations and train cars across all five boroughs with minimalist ads that read like therapy affirmations crossed with dystopian satire.
Messages like “I’ll never bail on our dinner plans” and “Your friend group isn’t diverse enough” (the latter rejected by the MTA) turned subway commuters into unwilling participants in a high-stakes social experiment.
Public Backlash: From Graffiti to Digital Vandalism
The reaction was swift—and visceral. New Yorkers began defacing the ads with messages like “A.I. is burning the world around you” and “make a real friend.” Some ripped the posters down entirely. Online, the campaign exploded: Reddit threads dissected it, X (formerly Twitter) users mocked it, and a digital “vandalism simulator” launched, letting anyone spray-paint a virtual Friend.com ad.
“It’s a materialization of the anxiety about this transformation,” said Marc Mueller, creator of the virtual vandalism site, noting that pessimism quickly overtook early curiosity.
The Founder’s Defense: Art, Innovation, or Exploitation?
Schiffmann doesn’t see the backlash as a failure—he sees it as proof the campaign worked. “People don’t vandalize an irrelevant ad, right?” he told The New York Times. He compares the rollout to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 2005 “The Gates” installation in Central Park, calling it a “modern-day art exhibit.”
He insists the Friend.com AI companion isn’t meant to replace human relationships but to coexist with them—like pets, children, or roommates. “Why not an A.I.?” he asks.
Still, critics argue the product capitalizes on the loneliness epidemic while normalizing constant surveillance. NYU marketing professor Adam Alter put it bluntly: “To pretend that an A.I. version of friendship is just as good as… the real thing contradicts the sense that genuine friendship can’t be simulated.”
What This Says About Our Relationship with AI
Beyond the pendants and posters, the Friend.com saga reveals a cultural tipping point. As AI seeps into our emotional lives—therapy bots, companion robots, AI-generated intimacy—we’re forced to ask: What parts of humanity are non-negotiable?
As of October 2025, Friend.com has sold about 3,100 units, with plans to hit Walmart shelves next year. Whether that translates to mainstream adoption remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: the conversation has already begun.
