A 23-year-old named Avi Schiffmann has bet $10 million on that very future. In 2023, after dropping out of Harvard, Schiffmann started raising money to build an artificially intelligent “wearable mom.” That product debuted this summer as Friend, a chipper white pendant that, for $129, hangs around your neck, “always listening,” ready to quip and comment on the IRL goings-on of your life. In the canny way of any internetty Gen Z-er, Schiffmann, a self-taught web designer, has lobbed huge chunks of Friend’s seed capital into marketing — splurging $1.8 million on the URL friend.com and $1 million on an unprecedentedly enormous ad buyout across New York City’s subway system. The posters chirp dictionary definitions of the word “friend” next to soft-focus close-ups of the pendant, as well as pert one-liners like “I’ll never leave dirty dishes in the sink.”