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New Startup Goes Viral For $99 AI Friend Necklace
- Written by Andrea Miliani Former Tech News Expert
- Fact-Checked by
The new startup Friend is developing an AI wearable device, called Friend, and its pre-order campaign along with its controversial commercial and business decisions have gotten people’s attention.
Avi Schiffmann, Friend’s CEO, shared on X earlier this week the video to promote the new product, valued at $99, and expected to be shipped in the first quarter of 2025 to the US and Canadian markets “on a first come, first serve basis”, as stated on its website.
introducing friend. not imaginary. order now at https://t.co/7kGiH5pQVK pic.twitter.com/qU58xNvX5v — Avi (@AviSchiffmann) July 30, 2024
Besides the commercial, the domain name also caught the attention of X users since Schiffmann said he paid $1.8 million for it. This purchase was later confirmed by the tech news website 404 Media and, according to TechCrunch , represents a large portion of the $2.5 million in funding recently raised by the company.
Schiffmann, a Harvard dropout, gained fame during the pandemic for creating an award-winning website to track the spread of COVID-19 when he was just 17 years old in 2020.
According to FastCompany , after his successful website, Schiffmann traveled solo to Japan and experienced isolation and loneliness while there. These emotions apparently led him to the idea of an AI companion that can go with you everywhere and listen to everything, which was first introduced last October .
Schiffmann’s post with the new video commercial has already reached over 21 million views on the social media platform. Users have shared different thoughts. “I appreciate you making it in the style of an A24 horror movie trailer, ensuring that I will never contemplate buying this,” said one user. “Good for you for trying something very different,” added another one.
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OpenAI Will Give U.S. Safety Institute Early Access To New Models
- Written by Andrea Miliani Former Tech News Expert
- Fact-Checked by
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, announced today on X that the company will provide early access to the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute to the upcoming foundational model.
“As we said last July, we’re committed to allocating at least 20% of the computing resources to safety efforts across the entire company,” wrote Altman, “Our team has been working with the US AI Safety Institute on an agreement where we would provide early access to our next foundation model so that we can work together to push forward the science of AI evaluations.”
Altman said he was excited about this decision and added that they want current and former employees to express their concerns about the AI technologies the company is developing. He emphasized that it was important for the company and its safety plan.
According to TechCrunch , the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute—part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology ( NIST )—addresses and assesses risks in AI platforms and OpenAI has already worked on a similar agreement with the United Kingdom just a few weeks ago.
Altman’s announcement comes after people and organizations have criticized the company’s safety measures. In June, multiple current and former employees from OpenAI signed an open letter to express concerns and warn about AI spreading misinformation and becoming a risk to society. Various workers have also quit the company due to safety concerns, including key OpenAI researcher Jan Leike , after OpenAI dissolved the Superalignment team, in charge of addressing AI risks.
Despite the security concerns, OpenAI keeps moving forward. The company just launched the voice feature for ChatGPT Plus , and a new AI-powered search engine called SearchGPT is available for selected users.
The new efforts to add security measures seem to prove that Altman and his team have not forgotten about AI risks and concerns.
