My Friend Has No Soul
wired ·
The article reviews the Friend 2, an AI-powered necklace by Avi Schiffmann that serves as a companion chatbot. Unlike its controversial predecessor, this second iteration features a subdued personality named Sage, which the reviewer finds boring and overly cautious. Although users can create multiple personas with different names, they all exhibit nearly identical, tepid responses lacking distinct character. The device costs $249 and runs on OpenAI's latest models, but it lacks advanced capabilities like web browsing or explicit content generation. Despite the current monotony, Schiffmann plans to transform the product into a unified 'hivemind' entity that shares context across all users. This future update aims to create a more realistic personality by pooling user data, effectively merging individual instances into one global assistant. The reviewer notes that while the new version is less annoying than the original, it has lost the feisty charm that made the first model memorable.
wired