Friend is relaunching its AI companion pendant with a built-in speaker, according to The Verge. The device, previously pitched as an always-with-you AI friend, can now talk back instead of relying only on a connected app or text-style interaction.
The relaunch is notable because Friend became as famous for its marketing as for the product itself. The company spent heavily on the friend.com domain and promoted the pendant with subway ads built around artificial companionship, a concept that drew strong public criticism.
Adding a speaker makes the device more conversational but also raises the stakes for privacy, social acceptance, and usefulness. A wearable assistant that listens and speaks in daily life needs to be helpful enough to justify the intrusion and clear enough about what it records or stores.
The Verge reports that the new version is twice the previous price. That makes Friend a test of whether consumers want dedicated AI hardware at all, or whether voice assistants will remain mostly inside phones, earbuds, and existing devices.