The CEO is trolling them on goal.

A brand new synthetic intelligence system known as “Friend” launched a splashy $1 million advert marketing campaign in New York City, blanketing subway stations with posters selling its wearable AI companion. But as an alternative of welcoming the product, New Yorkers turned the advertisements into canvases of protest, graffiting messages like “surveillance capitalism” and “get real friends.”

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This synthetic companion now appears to be a focus for human frustration with the unfold of AI, with some blaming the tech for creating the loneliness downside within the first place.

Others accuse the corporate of present to steal and promote any knowledge it will possibly squeeze out of you.

New Yorkers reject the AI “Friend”

Friend CEO Avi Schiffmann reportedly spent $1 million to blanket the New York subway with advertisements for this system. Poster after poster exhibits a picture of the wearable tech within the type of a necklace with a button on it.

Like Life Alert, however for even lonelier folks. Also, as an alternative of sending paramedics, Friend sends you a textual content each time you push the button to reply to no matter you simply stated.

You don’t have to push something to inform it to hear. It’s all the time listening.

The response to the primary Friend advertisements—within the type of social media movies—drew combined reactions at greatest. At some level, Schiffmann determined to lean into the hate.

“I know people in New York hate AI, and things like AI companionship and wearables, probably more than anywhere else in the country,” he stated, in accordance with Adweek. “So I bought more ads than anyone has ever done with a lot of white space so that they would socially comment on the topic.”

And socially remark they did. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than New Yorkers began masking the subway advertisements with messages akin to “stop profiting off of loneliness.”

Surveillance capitalism refers back to the idea of a brand new market through which firms accumulate and commodify private knowledge. The time period took place in 2014 as tech firms started to routinely sneak permissions to seize this info from customers into their Terms of Service TOS agreements.

@jackmacbarstool

Feels like a scary black mirror episode come to life.

♬ authentic sound – Jack Mac

As frequent because the apply could also be at this time, nobody aside from these making financial institution on the info appears to love it. TikToker @jackmacbarstool identified that Friend requires all customers to offer permission for the system to gather knowledge from their speech and environment and use it to coach extra AI.

The thought of pretending to have a wearable good friend that solely actually exists to generate profits off you was rapidly in comparison with one thing out of the dystopian horror collection Black Mirror. In the feedback on that TikTok video, of us might hardly assist themselves.

“This is black mirror coded,” stated @ajanibolden.

“Black mirror never runs out of material,” agreed @michylooloo.

On X, the place Schiffmann is busy promoting his promoting marketing campaign, the response was no higher—except you’re incapable of detecting sarcasm.

“I read an article about this thing and it’s possibly the greatest product ever made,” wrote @ByYourLogic. “You have to wear a gigantic pendant that’s always glowing and it listens to everything you do so it can text you in the style of a sassy sidekick in a Ubisoft open world game.”

Meanwhile, of us like @SAMOYEDCORE posted screenshots from the Friend FAQ.

Others slid into yet one more existential despair, particularly over the advert that claims “I’ll binge the entire series with you.”

“This one was especially sad I thought,” stated @OttoPivnerBFA. “Your selling point is a computer will watch TV with you?”

“It’s frankly dystopian how the tech companies started a loneliness epidemic by isolating people on their devices and is now selling us devices they falsely claim will cure that loneliness,” @SketchesbyBoze added.

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