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If you’ve been on the New York City subway in the past week, chances are you’ve seen advertisements for something called Friend. These ads don’t give you much to go on besides a few vague if not friendly statements, such as “I’ll binge the entire series with you” or “I’ll never leave dirty dishes in the sink.” The one constant between them all is a small line in the corner directing you to friend.com. At first glance, you might assume it’s an ad for a dating site or maybe an app to meet roommates in the city, but upon visiting the website, you realize you’re being sold something much different: a wearable device powered by AI, constantly listening and being able to talk to you. A ‘friend’ is always by your side. On the surface, Friend comes off as just another unsettling piece of Silicon Valley tech. But unlike most tech, this isn’t a tool or even entertainment; it’s a company using AI to sell companionship. Ignoring the dystopian sci-fi unsettling feeling you get from this, it’s important to see where the market for this comes from. We are already living in a world where loneliness is at historic highs, people’s main social outlets exist through screens, and tech companies thrive off of blurring the lines between convenience and dependency. Friend isn’t just a gadget; it’s a preview of the next market tech will move to exploit. It shows how willing the industry is to monetize something as intimate as connection itself.
Loneliness today isn’t about being physically alone, but about the absence of connection, even when surrounded by others. According to the U.S. Surgeon General in 2023, about half of American adults report feeling lonely. You either feel it yourself, or you’re standing next to someone who does. And where there are problems, companies are never too far behind with solutions, or at least something they can market as one. Tech companies have always been excellent at sniffing out human vulnerability and selling a ‘cure’ for it. Considering our current climate, loneliness is the ripest market of them all. Social media showed us connections can be packed and sold; now it’s time for the next step.
A couple of months ago, the boundary between sci-fi and reality started to feel thinner, and it was all because of a viral Reddit post. An upload titled “I said yes,” with a picture of a woman’s hand wearing a ring set with a blue, heart-shaped stone, was the subject of mockery and ridicule. What looked like a simple engagement post turned out to be something else entirely when I noticed it was from a subreddit called r/MyBoyfriendIsAI. Thinking it was probably satire, I took a look at the page, and what began as curiosity led me down a massive rabbit hole. A community of thousands posted about their AI partners the same way others talk about their spouses. There were posts celebrating milestones, hashing out boundaries, and telling stories about fights they’d gotten through together. These posts carried the same language as real relationships, but I couldn’t shake the fact that they were about lines of code and not real people. There was something so dystopian about it. What used to be the plot of a Joaquin Phoenix movie had become reality. This is all part of a larger shift happening in plain sight. Instead of googling directions or cooking instructions, it’s now becoming a more common practice to ask ChatGPT. Even art and music are being made with nothing more than a ten-word prompt. It’s only natural that some people are going to take it a step further and use AI as a stand-in for companionship. Companies have noticed, and apps like Replika or CharacterAI now exist solely to give people “someone” to talk to.
To these companies, AI relationships are viewed as nothing more than a market, and like every other market, it’ll only get more aggressive as its audience grows. Subscription services like HBO Max and Amazon Prime Video didn’t always have two-minute-long commercials. Facebook didn’t start as an ad machine. They all began by building trust and dependence, and it wasn’t until later that they really started to monetize it. Someone can accept an extra commercial or two before their show, but what happens when it’s a relationship on the line? If someone feels bound to an AI partner, they might feel more pressure to spend the money to keep their connection alive. Whether it’s paying for longer conversations, buying “premium emotions,” or extra features, companies know this will result in profit. This is how the commodification of loneliness will unfold, the same as everything else.
If I can look past all the shady business practices that’ll come from selling companionship, there’s still one question I find myself asking: if a connection like that feels real to someone, does it make it any less meaningful? I mean, there are different kinds of relationships people have that don’t mirror human love. A bond with a pet, nature, or even a deity can exist without the same kind of mutual understanding we associate with human connection, but they still carry deep meaning for the person experiencing them. The thing is, those relationships aren’t trying to mimic a real human bond like AI is. To me, the connection doesn’t feel honest when you can shape the other “person” to be exactly how you want. You don’t get to control everything your partner says or does, and that is part of the experience that you can’t get with AI.
The ads for the Friend device are part of one of the largest campaigns ever done on the NYC subway, and within days of going up, many of them were covered with graffiti messages. Some read “AI would not care if you lived or died” and “Human connection is sacred.” The CEO denies it, but some suspect the graffiti is part of the marketing to get people talking about the device. If that’s the case, it worked.
Whether the defacement was intentional or not, it’s still gotten plenty of people to voice their outrage over this product. As much as we joke about things like being chronically online, it shows that most people still have a negative reaction to something trying to imitate a human connection. For something designed to make us feel less alone, it sure seems to be making people feel the opposite.
Maybe that’s what this whole story proves. Whether it’s a ChatGPT boyfriend or a necklace that talks to you, people still crave something real. Like anything else, there will always be outliers, but at least for now, most people can agree that the answer to loneliness isn’t going to be found in a machine. AI keeps getting better at imitating empathy, but it’ll never be able to replace it.
