New York experienced a backlash last week, as subway ads for Friend, an AI pendant retailing for $129, were sprayed and defaced with “AI doesn’t care” and “human connection is sacred.”
The series of ads were created by the startup company Friend, with an aim of attracting more customers into wearing the AI powered necklaces.
Friend was launched in 2023 and specialize in pendants, complete with a microphone, that listen in on the wearers dialogues and text back messages, as if it were a close companion.
With the devices always listening and recording, the anger is about the fact that bystanders would have no choice if conversations were always being recorded.
What had started with graffiti then proliferated on social media, as vandalized versions of the ads were passed around.
The Friend is intended to “listen, respond, and support you” in a marketing campaign built on robotic empathy, and we asked an expert to shed some light on the pressing issues of privacy and surveillance, as well as what the backlash signifies.
The creepy subtlety of wearables
To dig deeper, Cybernews picked the brains of Steven Athwal, CEO of The Big Phone Store.
“There’s a creepy subtlety about technology that’s always listening,” says Athwal, pointing to the unethical presence of wearables.
“Even if you’ve agreed to it, people around you haven’t. Conversations shouldn’t be datapoints – they’re emotional, spontaneous, and not meant to be logged anywhere.”
When you consider the sheer number of people who use the New York subway, the backlash certainly raises awareness, whichever side of the fence you’re on..
Why did the protests erupt?
There’s a lot of fatigue with the ubiquity of AI all around us. If you take a glance at the original ad campaign for Friend, you’ll see a quite intrusive companion that might just text you while you’re in the middle of playing video games.
While this kind of digital rapport may appeal to some, it feels like it straddles the tightrope of utopian and dystopian living.
“People are tired of being tracked, studied, ‘understood,’” Athwal says.
“Every new AI device promises connection but reminds them how disconnected they already are.”
With regards to the defacement in the Big Apple, Athwal points to a society that’s cutting the cord on being vulnerable to big tech:
“The vandalized ads aren’t just about this necklace, they’re about a public that’s done being experimented on without consent,” Athwal offered.
Friend[dot]com marketing campaign for and AI “friend” necklace has been completely defaced in NYC subway and I’m not surprised.
undefined 𝔼𝕦𝕟𝕚𝕜𝕒 | (@eunika_sot) September 30, 2025
However, there is another reason I want to share this image. If you haven’t read “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by @shoshanazuboff then you… pic.twitter.com/45YX8AX6S9
Companionship = surveillance capitalism
When 73% of Americans (according to Harvard’s Making Caring Common project) think that technology is the top contributor to loneliness, you can sense that trouble is afoot – or in this case, around your neck.
Every burst of spontaneity, whether serious or in jest, would become a profile, stored away, and who knows what people say in private?
“Conversations shouldn’t be datapoints,” Athwal warns. “With AI, where do they end up? Servers, transcriptions, learning algorithms that get to know you before you decide whether to trust them.”
As companionship is being commodified by Friend, so-called intimacy leads to pure analytics. If Meta’s smart glasses and Amazon's Echo Smart speaker (going back a decade now) started the trend of recording fragments of your conversation to optimize, say, tomorrow's weather, now the Friend pendant promises not just to hear you but to understand you, too.
The loneliness paradox
For some users, however, the pendant might come as a breath of fresh air, especially if they feel like they genuinely have nothing to hide.
“An AI companion that listens endlessly and never gets bored is enticing to some,” Athwal admits.
“But it can’t replace the messiness of real human connection.”
Since the times of Covid, we’ve paradoxically wanted to get closer to others, whilst simultaneously becoming more guarded about our privacy.
And there isn’t a “one size fits all,” even in the tech community. Many seek artificial connections to be less lonely, whereas others balk in disgust at the exploitation of our self-expression as the revenue stream gushes on.
So where does that leave us?
“If you own such a device, disable it when you’re around others,” Athwal advises.
“Don’t assume consent because it’s convenient. Read privacy policies carefully – terms like ‘shared,’ ‘retained,’ or ‘improving services’ usually mean your life is part of their database.”
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