Friend is an AI-powered, always-listening, wearable, mostly an AI chatbot that lives inside a pendant. It doesn’t require a subscription and connects over Bluetooth. It always has an opinion to share about what’s going on around it, which it communicates to you via text messages and push notifications on the phone it’s paired to. Its onboard microphone listens to everything happening around you by default. You can tap and hold it to ask it a question, or sometimes it will send messages about the conversation you just had, unprompted. No audio or transcripts are stored past Friend’s context window, and data is end-to-end encrypted. All memories can be deleted with one click on the Friend app. Powered by Anthropic AI’s Claude 3.5 large language model, Friend has around 15 hours of battery life and comes in an array of colours. It is meant to develop a personality that complements you and is always there to encourage you, chat, brainstorm, analyze a problem, or just offer pure companionship.

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