The Friend AI situation is getting very weird

This has got to stop. Unless something is done, and soon, we're going to destroy any genuine potential benefits of using AI as a companion.

From the reaction to Razer’s gaming companion to the misguided hand-wringing over Honor’s Robot Phone, few people seem willing to see or understand how, when used and managed responsibly, AI makes a great digital companion.

Now, the maker of the Friend necklace has released a series of short documentaries on YouTube, and while I have to assume the intention was good, the results do nothing but push the concept of AI companions even further away from the mainstream.

AI (perhaps in all its forms) cannot be marketed this way, or it’s forever going to be wrongly labeled as a niche service for desperate shut-ins.

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By  Mark Jansen

Watch the short films

See the problem first hand

The Friend is an AI companion worn around your neck like a pendant, which is always listening and ready to interact with you at the press of a button.

It has been around for a year or so, and is one of several examples of a crossover between wearable tech and AI companions.

Before we get too deep into this, the individuals featured in Friend’s short films are not the problem. They’ve all found something that helps them better connect with the world, work through times of personal development or change, or make sense of their circumstances, and I love that.

The problem is how their stories are presented. Each short film has a particular atmosphere. It’s not one of happiness or empathy, but more of a disconnect. An odd sense of dread. That something isn’t quite right.

The lazy analogy will be to compare the events with an episode of Black Mirror, but it’s way more than that. It reminds me of unsettling films like Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2009 movie Dogtooth, Michael Haneke’s 2005 movie Cache, or even Lynne Ramsay’s 2011 movie We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Again, it’s not the people, it’s the atmosphere generated, particularly in the first two short films, that means it’s frighteningly easy to compare them to disturbing films about society and control.

Presentation is everything

So why is it so dystopian?

Here’s what baffles me. These short films have presumably been made to sell a product. Yet, if you told me they were promotional material for the next Lars Von Trier movie, I’d probably believe you.

There’s a portentous atmosphere which gives you the feeling something else is going to happen to all three of these people, and it probably won’t be good.

Published on the Friend Media Channel, which sounds very Videodrome to me, each short film is given the title “User Experience” with a hashtag and a number after it.

There’s no mention of the featured person or their name, making it feel like a soulless entry into a government research file.

In User Experience #1, it barely feels real. The awkward interviews and the haunting music are only part of the problem.

It seems to have been directed and filmed in a very intentional, almost voyeuristic way, which is repeated in User Experience #2. It’s oddly dehumanizing, for a product based around people.

It’s also jarring to watch the protagonists talk to the Friend necklace, because you never hear the response. It’s only displayed on the phone’s screen, but this is downplayed considerably, making it appear like people are simply talking to themselves or some unseen entity.

Each short film ends with the word “Friend” splashed across the screen in a white font against a black background. It’s not welcoming or fun, it’s borderline horrific.

From the sterile, impersonal titles, the lack of real names, and the many shots of people talking to themselves, none of these short films makes me want to have anything to do with Friend AI at all, ever.

But isn’t it dystopian anyway?

No, not really

You may have read to this point and thought, “duh, of course an AI companion is dystopian and weird,” but this is not the case at all.

There’s genuine value in using AI for companionship, whether it’s due to loneliness, social awkwardness, mental health, or just for fun. It’s very much a “don’t knock it until you try it” situation.

I get the knee-jerk reaction to point and laugh; an expected early reaction to many boundary-pushing developments, and it’s why education around the subject is so imperative.

Because we’re right at the start of using AI as a companion, the messaging cannot be this weird. Public opinion will simply never change if the advertising by the very companies selling such products feeds into their concerns and prejudices.

It’s good to confront the public with bold ad campaigns, but less so when few people actually understand, or are even vaguely aware of the subject’s real-world benefits.

Wait, isn’t Friend’s product an AI companion?

Yes, yes it is

What’s really confusing is, listening to Friend CEO Avi Schiffmann speak about the technology, his intentions are at odds with the bizarre videos.

Schiffmann talks honestly about the AI and how people connect with it in an interview with CNN, where he’s engaging and open, and I’d buy the Friend necklace after listening to him talk about it.

Show me the User Experience videos in isolation, and I’d run a mile.

However, there is a small chance this is all part of Friend’s performance art approach to promotion.

You see, it’s not Friend’s first controversial marketing campaign, after a series of adverts in New York were vandalized, and the company saw considerable push back on its concept. It makes me wonder whether the videos are intentionally unsettling.

If so, mission accomplished. Unfortunately, it’s not going to sell an already very skeptical world on AI companions, and a very unusual approach for a company presumably wanting to make a few sales.

I want people to better understand this misunderstood technology, but one of the few companies that should be helping me, is doing everything it can to make things worse.