France bans the controversial AI gadget from the startup Friend, and that's not a surprise.

A few months ago, the startup Friend made a lot of noise in France. Founded by the young American entrepreneur Avi Schiffmann, the startup developed a connected pendant, powered by AI. The accessory is presented as a « virtual friend » intended to combat loneliness, especially among young adults. Worn around the neck and connected to a smartphone app, the necklace constantly listens to your environment through a microphone. Friend was omnipresent in Paris metro through a large advertising campaign. Despite the money invested in French communication, the IA pendant is currently banned in France... and throughout Europe.

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An IA pendant in violation of the GDPR

Despite well-orchestrated communication and tens of thousands of euros spent, Friend.com announced that it would not sell its necklace in Europe for now. Not surprisingly, the accessory ran into the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the European regulation that governs the processing of personal data. In effect since 2018, it governs the collection, storage, and use of personal data throughout the entire European Union.

The GDPR prohibits, among other things, recording an individual's conversations without their knowledge. Yet that is exactly what the Friend connected gadget proposes, which continuously listens to all sounds around it. Moreover, the necklace could accidentally capture sensitive data, such as medical information, which represents another point of friction with the GDPR.

According to the information relayed by the Echos, it turns out that the Paris metro advertising campaign has attracted the attention of French authorities. The CNIL (Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés), the French authority responsible for protecting personal data, took the file into its own hands in February. For the past two months, the data watchdog has been exchanging with the American company to ensure the legality of the device.

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Toward an AI-compatible pendant under the GDPR?

Despite the obstacles encountered, Avi Schiffmann does not give up. The entrepreneur explains that he wants to make sure « that we are fully compliant with the GDPR before shipping the pendant to the EU, which is what we are currently working on with our European legal team ». In the meantime, the pendant, sold for more than $100, cannot be marketed in the European Union.

« Personally, I am also a French citizen and data privacy matters a lot. This has always been our project, but the success of the Paris campaign has certainly accelerated the urgency », admits Avi Schiffmann.

As a reminder, Avi Schiffmann has invested a great deal of money in this project. The entrepreneur spent $1.8 million to acquire the domain friend.com in 2024, and injected $1 million into a massive advertising campaign in New York, with 11,000 posters in the subway. Despite the efforts made by the startup, the accessory has not met the expected success. According to the magazine Fortune, barely 3,000 units have been sold in the United States. To defend his project, Schiffmann prefers to focus on the number of Friend users. He claims that « more than 200,000 users » converse with his AI. The entrepreneur takes into account both the few thousand users of the connected necklace, and the people who simply signed up on the web interface, accessible without having to spend a single cent. This interface, which we have tested, allows creating « virtual friends » and conversing with them.

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Source : Les Echos