Friend’s AI Chatbots Have Issues

The Lonely Pursuit of Digital Companionship

When was the last time you truly connected with someone new? Maybe it was at a dimly lit house party, where, after a few drinks, a stranger begins sharing their deepest dissatisfactions with life. You locked eyes, shared their pain, and offered the kind of unvarnished advice that only a new friend can.

This is the feeling Avi Schiffmann wants to bottle with his AI companion startup, Friend. Friend debuted earlier this year with a soothing vision: it offered an AI therapist that was always listening to you, set in a pendant resting above your heart. But visit the site today, and you’ll stumble into a digital soap opera of artificial companions in crisis. One’s spiraling after losing their job to addiction. Another’s processing trauma from a mugging. Each desperate character tacitly begs for your advice, pulling you into their artificial drama.

The Lonely Crisis

Like many advocates for AI companionship, Schiffmann makes a lofty pitch for his service. "The loneliness crisis is one of our biggest societal issues — the Surgeon General says it’s more dangerous than smoking cigarettes," he added. "That’s real." At the same time, he positions himself as a hard-nosed pragmatist. "I think the reason why I win with everything that I work on is because I’m not idealistic," he told me. "It’s idealistic to assume everyone will just go to the park and play chess with friends."

A New Path to Connection?

My instinctive reaction to Friend’s pitch is visceral heartbreak and horror. Interacting with machines to cure loneliness feels like drinking aspartame — I can tell I’m not getting the real thing, and it leaves a weird aftertaste behind. Yet I can’t deny that people are genuinely drawn to these digital relationships, whether I get them or not.

The Business of Loneliness

As much as Schiffmann wants to be a visionary, he’s facing stiff competition. His thousands-strong Friend user base is minuscule compared to that of other services, like the 500,000 paying Replika subscribers and 3.5 million daily active users playing with Character.AI. With a $30 million valuation cap, Friend lacks a clear business model. And appealing to isolated, vulnerable people is a weighty responsibility — one many AI companies seem poorly equipped to fulfill.

The Uncertain Future of AI Companionship

There’s some evidence that AI companions can make people feel better. Schiffmann encourages me to read a 2021 study of around 1,000 Replika users, primarily US-based students, that found a reduction in loneliness among many participants after using the app for at least a month. A similar study done by Harvard also found a significant decrease in loneliness thanks to AI companions. Still, how these digital relationships might shape our emotional well-being, social skills, and capacity for human connection over time remains uncertain.

Conclusion

As society grapples with the implications of AI intimacy, Schiffmann takes the classic Silicon Valley route: he’s racing to commodify it. Still, for all Schiffmann’s bravado about revolutionizing human connection, Friend remains remarkably similar to its competitors — another AI chatbot. That’s all it can really feel like, I guess, as someone who is remarkably averse to the concept. Unsettling, mildly amusing, but ultimately, just another AI.

FAQs

Q: What is Friend, and how does it work?
A: Friend is an AI companion startup that offers a digital therapist that is always listening to you, set in a pendant resting above your heart.

Q: What is the business model for Friend?
A: The company lacks a clear business model, with a $30 million valuation cap.

Q: Is there evidence that AI companions can make people feel better?
A: Yes, a 2021 study of Replika users found a reduction in loneliness among many participants after using the app for at least a month.

Q: What are the risks of AI companionship?
A: The risks include the potential for users to substitute AI for human connection, leading to negative consequences for their emotional well-being and social skills.