{"id":966331,"date":"2025-10-06T11:25:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T05:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/?p=966331"},"modified":"2025-10-06T11:25:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T05:55:07","slug":"ai-hardware-startup-ceo-after-people-damage-1-million-ad-doesnt-feel-like-that-expensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/2025\/10\/06\/ai-hardware-startup-ceo-after-people-damage-1-million-ad-doesnt-feel-like-that-expensive\/","title":{"rendered":"AI hardware startup CEO after people damage $1 million ad: Doesn&#8217;t feel like that expensive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AI hardware startup Friend\u2019s CEO Avi Schiffman isn\u2019t much affected after the company\u2019s ads were damaged. Talking at a recent episode of the Access podcast, he described the public response to his company&#8217;s seven-figure New York City subway ad campaign as &#8220;entertaining,&#8221; even after many ads were defaced with anti-AI graffiti. Friend, which sells an AI companion in the form of a pendant necklace, spent over $1 million on a print campaign that included more than 11,000 subway car ads. However, New Yorkers promptly defaced the ads with phrases like &#8220;AI is not your friend,&#8221; &#8220;Human connection is sacred,&#8221; and &#8220;surveillance tool,&#8221; according to photos obtained by Business Insider. The Friend pendant is designed to listen to unprompted conversations and respond through a connected app on the user&#8217;s phone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AI hardware startup Friend\u2019s CEO Avi Schiffman isn\u2019t much affected after the company\u2019s ads were damaged. Talking at a recent episode of the Access podcast, he described the public response to his company&#8217;s seven-figure New York City subway ad campaign as &#8220;entertaining,&#8221; even after many ads were defaced with anti-AI graffiti. Friend, which sells an AI companion in the form of a pendant necklace, spent over $1 million on a print campaign that included more than 11,000 subway car ads. However, New Yorkers promptly defaced the ads with phrases like &#8220;AI is not your friend,&#8221; &#8220;Human connection is sacred,&#8221; and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,4,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-966331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-2-the-times-of-india","category-newspapers","category-the-times-of-india"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}