Call A Friend

April 25, 2025 

A few quick notes from the intersection of AI, marketing, branding, and small business.

Call a friend! I’m picking up from a post last week about AI friendships. In this article in UnHerd, Tom Rachman puts his thumb on the “no” side of the scale. All the AI-will-be-your-friend companies, he says, are going to make a fortune out of our loneliness. This is one thing we all have to know about these insanely fast-growing AI companies: There’s going to monetize the shit out of us. I’ll just editorialize a little further to say that paying for friends has never been the ideal, so I’m going to stop typing this blog and call a friend. Right now! You should do the same.

That said. Thinking about and portrayals of a dystopian future of AI friends and AI robot “friendly friends” is not going away any time soon. I highly recommend The Pleasure Model Repairman, a novel from Ruuf Wangersen. Hilarious sci-fi look at the coming world of pleasure models.

Survey the trend. This article in Fe/male Switch covers the rising trend of AI friends and looks toward the future. By the early 2030s, according to the piece, the AI companion market will be somewhere between $24B-$500B. Wide range! But you get the picture. 

A few competitors in the race for friends. These are some of the current aspirants in this heated field.