We often hear whispers about artificial intelligence taking over, but for anyone who’s recently navigated the New York City subway, it feels like that future has already arrived—sort of.
Over the past six weeks, a startup named Friend.com has saturated subway cars and stations throughout all five boroughs with ads for its new product: a wearable AI pendant. For $129, this device promises to listen to your conversations and literally become your friend.
Avi Schiffmann, the 22-year-old founder and CEO of Friend, noted in an interview that “Only the MTA allows you to buy a full takeover like that. It almost feels illegal.”
Schiffmann, who invested under $1 million to plaster his ads across vast sections of one of the globe’s busiest subway networks, described the experience as “addicting.”
The sheer dominance of the campaign, coupled with growing public anxiety over AI’s swift intrusion into our personal spheres, has transformed it into one of the most discussed subway marketing efforts in recent memory.
The ads themselves, minimalist black text on a white backdrop (sometimes featuring a close-up of the pendant), playfully highlight the ‘inconveniences’ of human relationships. However, quips like “I’ll never bail on our dinner plans” clearly hit a raw nerve with many New Yorkers, and it wasn’t long before a significant backlash erupted.
Throughout the city, these ads quickly became canvases for public expression, with graffiti messages ranging from hostile warnings like “A.I. is burning the world around you” to heartfelt pleas such as “make a real friend.” Critics accused the company of exploiting the loneliness epidemic and contributing to capitalist surveillance. In many cases, posters were simply torn down.
As the campaign spread to New York and Los Angeles, social media platforms like X and Reddit were inundated with photos of the ads, whether pristine, defaced, or completely destroyed. An entire website emerged, serving as an online gallery for the ‘Friend’ ad defacement. Another platform even offered users the chance to digitally vandalize a virtual version of the controversial ad with spray paint.
Yet, despite the widespread commotion, Schiffmann waited a full month after the ads first appeared to comment online. His September 25th post on X, where he boldly declared his subway campaign the largest in New York’s history, has since garnered over 25 million views. The fierce public reaction, essentially turning his ads into real-world ‘rage-bait’ canvases, has not seemed to faze him.
He shrugged off the criticism, stating, “I kind of view it as a side effect of doing big things. People don’t vandalize an irrelevant ad, right?”
Perhaps he anticipated this. Friend’s 2024 YouTube launch video, which had an undeniably eerie tone, was met with a flood of dystopian comments and frequent comparisons to the popular streaming series “Black Mirror.”
Schiffmann isn’t new to internet fame, though his past ventures typically drew more positive attention. At just 18, he developed a straightforward tracker for early COVID-19 data, pulling information from Chinese health departments. Later, in 2022, he created a platform to connect Ukrainian refugees with hosts globally after the Russian invasion.
Despite the recent uproar, Schiffmann maintains that his latest project aligns with his previous humanitarian efforts. However, shifting deeply ingrained public perceptions in such a sensitive discussion, even with the best intentions, proves to be a significant challenge.
“The name itself is a major part of the problem,” remarked Adam Alter, a marketing professor at New York University. “Suggesting that an AI version of friendship is comparable to, or even superior to, genuine human connection directly clashes with the understanding that true friendship cannot be replicated by nonhuman entities.”
Schiffmann, however, dismisses this as a common misconception. “I don’t view this as dystopian,” he clarified, suggesting that his AI ‘friend’ represents a new form of companionship, designed to complement traditional friendships, not replace them.
“We have a cat, a dog, a child, and an adult all in the same room,” he mused. “Why not an A.I.?”
Leading up to the campaign’s August 25th launch in New York, Schiffmann intentionally disconnected by heading to Burning Man. “I wanted to do the coolest thing I could possibly do and the biggest thing I could possibly do at the same time,” he explained, calling it ‘life-maxing.’
This ambitious campaign, however, had been brewing for some time. Schiffmann, a San Francisco resident, recalled often sitting on his Lower Haight porch, observing bus-side ads, some of which promoted pet adoption.
“They were kind of selling you a companion,” he noted, prompting him to consider if a similar concept could apply to Friend. After the AI pendant began shipping in July, Schiffmann personally penned the campaign’s slogans. (He revealed that one particular line — “Your friend group isn’t diverse enough” — was rejected by the MTA.)
Victoria Mottesheard, a Vice President at Outfront Media, the firm overseeing MTA advertising, attributed the Friend campaign’s rapid fame—even without an initial online push—to “the sheer topic.” She emphasized that AI “is the conversation of 2025.”
Mottesheard, however, chose not to comment on the extensive vandalism.
Marc Mueller, who launched his virtual vandalization website less than a week ago, has already received nearly 6,000 submissions. He echoed this sentiment, stating, “I think we’ll sit at the dinner table in five years and think of this as a moment. It’s a materialization of the anxiety about this transformation.”
Initially, Mueller observed a balanced mix of positive and negative feedback on his site, largely from the tech community. However, as the site gained broader online traction, public sentiment quickly shifted, becoming overwhelmingly pessimistic towards Friend and AI in general.
Mueller also identified a third group: those who viewed the campaign as a form of performance art. He remarked, “I was thinking to myself that Andy Warhol would be in awe with this whole rollout and the graffiti.”
Coincidentally, Schiffmann himself drew artistic inspiration from ‘The Gates,’ Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 2005 installation of 7,500 saffron-colored gates in Central Park, which drew global attention. Reflecting on his own campaign’s impact, Schiffmann declared, “The mayor should come and appreciate what we’ve done, because it really is a modern day art exhibit.”
However, widespread buzz doesn’t always guarantee high sales. As of this report, only about 3,100 pendants have been sold, though Schiffmann anticipates a rapid surge once the product reaches major retailers like Walmart next year. Meanwhile, the ad campaign continues its rollout in Los Angeles, with Chicago slated as the next city.
Schiffmann remains hopeful that AI companions will “raise the average emotional intelligence significantly.” Yet, he conceded that society might not yet be fully prepared for AI companionship on such a pervasive scale.
Ultimately, Schiffmann stated the campaign’s core purpose was to “redefine what a friend is and have you think about that.” In that regard, he appears to have undeniably succeeded.