Are friends electric?

Eaon Pritchard.

The lines between the real and the artificial are blurred, simulations supplant genuine human connections, and the spectacle of pseudo-community reigns supreme.

No, I’m not describing the setup for a Black Mirror episode; it’s the latest $99 AI companion ‘innovation’ coming out of the dystopian Silicon Valley hellscape. The twisted technopolis where empathy never lived, dreams go to die, and the true believers swear allegiance to a techno-utopian ideology, believing that only technology can solve all humanity's problems.

And if they can’t find a problem to solve, then they create one.

Friend is one such example. It’s basically an AI ‘companion’—powered by Anthropic AI’s Claude 3.5 LLM—that ‘lives’ in a pendant that a user wears around their neck. An ‘always listening’ device, it converses directly with its user through text messages. Data privacy and surveillance issues aside, and even in AI‘s continued colossal missed-opportunity race to the bottom—take X, add AI, and MAKE IT WORSE—this is probably a new low.

Friend has a mic that listens to everything happening around the wearer by default. Sometimes, it will send messages—commentary about whatever the conversation is going on around it—completely unprompted.

Details on the tech spec can be read elsewhere, and if that’s what you think is the most exciting thing, then the rest of this article is not for you.

Friend is slightly different from other companion AIs because it has nothing to do with productivity. It doesn’t help get anything done; it’s just there.
The imaginary friend who will never disagree.
The hyperreality of companionship.

It’s potentially the ultimate simulation of human interaction (so far).

In his 1981 book Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard explores the concept of simulacra—copies or representations that become reality in their own right—and the phenomenon of simulation, where there’s no distinction between reality and representation.

Friend offers exactly this simulacrum of friendship—packaging companionship as a wearable gadget! This is the purest of the pure simulacrums—an imitation that has no original counterpart. The simulation of friendship and commodification of social relationships manifest in a ‘reality’ where the distinction between genuine human connection and an artificial one is not just blurred, but totally obliterated.

Guy Debord, the leading figure in the Situationist International and author of The Society of the Spectacle would offer a similar critique.

The Spectacle describes a society where social relationships are mediated by images and representations, creating a world of appearances and passive consumption. Friend, in this context, is a SPECTACULAR commodity—it commodifies in totality the deeply personal experience of friendship, reducing it to a series of programmed interactions mediated by algorithms. Take that, Facebook.

Debord would argue that Friend is a SPECTACLE of pseudo-community, an illusion of connection designed to pacify individuals, distracting them from the inherent alienation in their social conditions. By providing a convenient, pre-packaged version of companionship, Friend makes users consumers of social interactions rather than active participants in genuine relationships. Friend contributes to the ongoing alienation project of individuals in a commodified society. Replacing real interactions with a technological facsimile deepens the divide between people and authentic social connections. This alienation is a key feature of the Spectacle, which thrives on maintaining social control through distraction and superficial engagement.

But who cares?

These products are about as zeitgeisty as it gets. The prevailing culture of narcissism is obsessed with self-presentation and the constant pursuit of validation and admiration. In this cultural milieu, we all view ourselves as unique and exceptional, deserving of special treatment and recognition. It’s hyper-individualism FTW.

So, to hell with other people. Amirite, buddy?
(Friend device: ‘That’s right Eaon, fuck ‘em)