New York City subway ads for a new pendant by AI startup Friend were quickly defaced by droves of angry residents.

The company’s latest gizmo, a necklace designed to constantly listen to you via a microphone and send snarky AI slop texts to your smartphone, has proven immensely controversial, leading to an outpouring of criticism.

The more people learn about the $129 device, the more appalled they are.

“Befriend something alive,” reads one graffiti tag.

“AI wouldn’t care if you lived or died,” another vandal wrote.

“Nobody who has friends needs an AI companion to chat with while enhancing the capacity of the surveillance state to a degree that would make George Orwell drink a jar of room temperature mercury,” NYC-based standup comedian Josh Gondelman wrote in a tongue-in-cheek “pep ta

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