Recently I was watching a TV series in which the main character was, as I like to call it, "Beautiful Minded". For multiple episodes, he was talking to an old friend, one who did not always have his best interests at heart. It turned out the guy was in his head. This filmatic trope should be familiar to anyone who has seen the film A Beautiful Mind or Fight Club, where – spoiler alert – Tyler Durden doesn't exist, and Edward Norton is beating the crap out of himself. It's only in recent months that I've started to imagine a connection between this plot device and artificial intelligence, in particular AI companions like AI Friend.
Have you seen the Friend Reveal Trailer video? It pitches a new $99 device that you wear around your neck like a too-big pendant. The built-in mics are always on, and Friend uses that information, activities on your phone, and whatever you tell it when you press its round face to connect with you. In the video, Friend offers unsolicited commentary on a woman's hike, another woman's lunch, and the show she's watching on her phone, and is apparently a third woman's most trusted companion aside from a potential beau.
