Yesterday I posted about the Friend reveal, a new AI necklace that listens to your surroundings, lets you speak to it and responds with texts. The trailer felt dystopian but I tried to remind myself that the older I get there may be new things that take some adjustment. While I personally do love the Friend, I can see that it's a direction we're headed.

What I really want to make note of is that all of these AI powered pieces of hardware have all had some drama attached to them and it's a really satisfying Internet dish. Friend is no different.

With the Rabbit R1 (which I felt intrigued by), folks quickly figured out that it was just a device running Android and the "Large Action Model (LAM)" was not quite as fancy as the founders would lead you to believe. The Humane AI Pin (which I felt intrigued by) got some terrible reviews and the parent company is exploring a sale.

With Friend, founder Avi Schiffmann raised $2.5 million in a fundraising rounder - a rather small bit of seed investment relatively speaking. Apparently, they spent $1.8million on the domain. Many are clarifying that it's on a payment plan so they didn't just squander 75% of their available funds but still. It's a helluva lot of money for a device that costs $100 and, frankly, isn't stirring much genuine interest. It feels like vaporware and I'll be shocked if it's around in a year. Bonus: this Wired interview is quite cringe-y - the bravado of a 20-year old trying to sell some futuristic tech rarely goes down well.