From The New York Times:
There is often talk of a looming takeover by artificial intelligence. But ask anyone who’s ridden the New York City subway recently, and they’ll probably tell you it’s already here. Well, kind of.
An advertisement deluge for an A.I. start-up called Friend.com has flooded subway cars and stations across the city’s five boroughs over the last six weeks. Its product is a wearable A.I. pendant that, for $129, will listen to your conversations and become your friend. “Only the M.T.A. allows you to buy a full takeover like that,” Avi Schiffmann, 22, the founder and chief executive of Friend, said in an interview. “It almost feels illegal.”
[Note: isn’t a great device of evil to distract us from each other and Christ?]
[Says Catholic News Agency: “The device first launched in 2024, retailing at $129. It is designed to listen to conversations, process the information, and send responses to the user’s phone via a connected app. While users can tap the disc’s button to prompt an immediate response, the product will also send unprompted texts. The device’s microphones don’t offer an off switch, so it is constantly listening and sending messages based on conversations it picks up.”]