Technology disrupts friendship. It’s time to bring it back

Anyone looking for A lively examination of residents’ current sentiments about AI would be best served by checking the walls of New York City’s subway system. This fall, along with posters for everything from dating apps to Skechers, a newcomer debuted: the boyfriend. The ads were simple, telling passengers that a “friend” is someone who “listens, responds, and supports you” next to an image of an accompanying white AI-powered pendant floating on a similar white background.

It was the perfect graffiti painting. “If you buy this, I will laugh at you in public.” “Warning: AI surveillance.” “Everyone feels lonely. Make real friends.” “AI slope.” These are just the distorted ads I noticed during my daily commutes from Brooklyn to Manhattan. There were so many that it became a meme. Reaction to the ad campaign, which the company’s founder said cost less than $1 million, was so vocal that it was covered by The New York Times.

People have always distorted New York subway ads in every way imaginable, but what happened with the Friends ads has sparked a deep concern about artificial intelligence. Even as some celebrate its potential (drug discovery) while others criticize its ramifications (environmental impacts, job erasure), the suggestion that killer AI could be a cure for loneliness seems to have struck a chord.

Actual nerve encased in flesh.

Friend was the latest in a series of Silicon Valley shows debuting in 2025 that promise digital companionship. In addition to suggesting you just pour your heart into ChatGPT, tech companies have introduced AI-powered travel guides, a dating app suite, and sexy chatbots. Teenagers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence for friendship. Five years after the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) isolated millions of people, and more than two years after the US Surgeon General declared loneliness an “epidemic,” artificial intelligence has emerged as a form of social media that offers less physical social connection than ever before.

“What is particularly striking is that this… [Silicon Valley] “Leaders are actively and openly voicing their desire for AI products to replace human relationships, completely ignoring the role that their companies — or their competitors — may have played in fueling the loneliness crisis the country faces today,” Lizzie Irwin, a policy communications specialist at the Center for Humane Technology, told me in an email. “They sold us communication via screens while it eroded face-to-face community, and now they are selling AI companions as a solution to the isolation they helped create.”

Social media began as a place where eccentric people and people with niche interests could find each other. By the 2000s, platforms like TikTok and Instagram had become places to interact with influencers and creatives, who were selling you stuff, less so with real-world connections. However, these platforms have taught users—you!—how to offload emotional labor to digital tools. (Why call your college friend when you can just click on the heart at the bottom of their post and save some time?) With AI, people don’t even need to put in the effort to make friends in the first place. And robots are much less difficult to maintain relationships with than actual humans.

“ChatGPT doesn’t leave its laundry on the floor,” says Melanie Green, a communications professor at the University at Buffalo, who has been studying people’s relationship with media for years. What’s happening now reminds her of research conducted in this field since the early days of the Internet. At that time, people would meet and form deep connections with others almost via chat. Computer-mediated communication allowed them to form “suprapersonal” relationships in which they were able to fill in everything they could not extract from the conversation with positive qualities. Like when you assume that your crush and you’re following on Instagram must apparently enjoy the same movies as you Really amazing.