Testing the Viral AI Necklace That Promises Companionship But Delivers Confusion

Fortune tested the AI Friend necklace for two weeks and found it struggled to perform its basic function. The $129 pendant missed conversations entirely during the author's breakup call and could only offer vague questions about "fragments" when she tried to ask for advice. The device lagged seven to ten seconds behind her speech and frequently disconnected. The author had to press her lips against the pendant and repeat herself multiple times to get coherent replies. After a week and a half the necklace forgot her name and later misremembered her favorite color.

The startup has raised roughly seven million dollars in venture capital for the product and spent a large portion on eleven thousand subway posters across the MTA system. Sales reached three thousand units but only one thousand have shipped. The company brought in slightly under four hundred thousand dollars in revenue. The startup told Fortune he deliberately "lobotomized" the AI's personality after receiving complaints. The terms of service require arbitration in San Francisco and grant the company permission to collect audio and voice data for AI training.

I Hate It Here

[TwistedGreen]

Every day I feel more and more like I'm living in the world of Transmetropolitan.

That series has aged like a fine Mongolian kumis.

Re:

[TWX]

I was just going to compare it to Terry Gilliam's Brazil, where technology is developed to a barely minimal working standard and then augmented stupidly, like the teeny tiny CRT displays with fresnel lenses sitting in front of them, connected to typewriters repurposed into electronic data entry keyboards.

Unfortunately while as zany as Gilliam's movie, it's not nearly as hilarious.

Re:

[anonymouscoward52236]

Who wants a "Viral Necklace"? Do you have to sterilize it first, or what?

Discworld

[TWX]

Anyone else getting vibes of the 'Dis-organizer' that Sam Vimes had in the Discworld novel Jingo, that would respond [Insert Name Here]?

Re:

[Errol backfiring]

You are awfully correct. One of its messages was "Things to do today: die". And yes, LLMs have brought the same message.

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

I'm thinking it's more like "Fad gewgaw pushed via TikTok fails to live up to the hype", a.k.a. business as usual.

Crash

[RobinH]

I was around for the dot-com crash in 2000, and the 2008 crash, and this has all the hallmarks. It's remarkable that the stock market hasn't really crashed since 2008, even though COVID caused a lot of instability and probably should have done it (but COVID was weird in so many ways). Cryptocurrency was the same kind of scam, but it seems most people didn't buy into it. But AI is something they've bought hook, line, and sinker.

If I made a million widgets, and sold one to my girlfriend for $1000, would yo

Re:

[TWX]

We value companies weirder than that.

We value companies for short-term gains based on what we perceive of a long-term potential. We want to see long term profit potential but we live by expecting strong numbers quarter-by-quarter, so company management ends up doing things for the short-term to make themselves look good at the expense of the long-term (like eliminating their research & development institutions) and then get mad later when those companies fade into relative irrelevance compared to their

Re:

[RobinH]

Google, Microsoft, and Amazon all gave users something they wanted. They solved problems we had. What problem is AI solving for me?

Re: Crash

[d4fseeker]

it solves job security. You'll need a ton of really talented engineers to keep runnin, what ai is spitting out

Re:

[Gilmoure]

Wanna hear a tinfoil-hat level conspiracy theory?

Maybe the entire AI hype is just to grab $$$ to build out huge data systems for full world population level surveillance?

Once every bit of data about people is captured and updated real-time, command and control could provide some folks with a cool real-world SIMs game.

I mean, 'AI' systems are really there to shuffle through exobytes of data and do rapid pattern recognition and matching.

Re:

[RobinH]

I was just hoping that once the AI stuff crashed, maybe all this surplus electrical grid capacity could be used to build out a proper EV charging network.

Re:

[Gilmoure]

If AI wave goes on 5 more years, might end up with a few new/refurb nuke power plants going.

Re:

[TwistedGreen]

Surveillance definitely is the killer app for AI. It's not going to go away because the promise of unlimited surveillance is irresistible to governments.

Think of it this way: If a government could watch every citizen for every minute of every day and report on their risk to the state, they would. In the past this has just been cost prohibitive. The logistics of monitoring a population by continuously evaluating their actions, coding reports from informants, cross-referencing patterns over time... it's huge.

Re: Crash

[drinkypoo]

Your assessment of companies' real value would be spot on if stock markets didn't exist, or even if they implemented some kind of systems for slowing trade, didn't allow HFT and so on. But we don't live in that world, and things are still worth what someone is willing to pay for them, so I'm reality their actual value is fluid.

I would like to live in the world you described, but we don't.

More surveillance?

[CoachS]

I can't help but wonder what will happen the first time one of these is present at a crime scene, or when somebody subpoenas them for eDiscovery due to civil litigation.

Re:

[burtosis]

I can't help but wonder what will happen the first time one of these is present at a crime scene, or when somebody subpoenas them for eDiscovery due to civil litigation.

It will plead the 5th?

Re:

[abulafia]

Apparently it would fail miserably to record anything actionable and then forget it is talking to a cop.

The Tamagotchi [wikipedia.org] was a far superior useless electronic friend. This is simply obvious.

More seriously, what is supposed to happen is pretty straightforward. These folks get a subpoena, they search their stored surveillance for hits, probably with an account identifier as a selector. They send responsive documents back along with some legal boilerplate and a signature.

In this case, I would guess these fo

Re:

[burtosis]

More seriously, what is supposed to happen is pretty straightforward. These folks get a subpoena, they search their stored surveillance for hits, probably with an account identifier as a selector. They send responsive documents back along with some legal boilerplate and a signature.

We are moving toward all companies like this just having an open contract with law enforcement so instead of this costing them money it’s monthly revenue.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

This is the same company that blanked NYC with its ads that promptly got vandalized, which they later claimed was the intent of the ad campaign.

https://youtu.be/Rrunp5oZO38?s... [youtu.be]

Going for gold

[MpVpRb]

...in the olympics of stoopid ideas
Meanwhile, scientists and engineers are building and using useful AI tools
And the moronosphere keeps expanding

Why is this news?

[couchslug]

Self-evidently silly idea is silly. The amount of money is trivial.

Companionship??

[sabbede]

From a piece of jewelry?

That's one of the saddest things I've heard, and it's their marketing?