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SilverFriend is an AI companion for older people. It calls your loved one at their preferred time on their ordinary phone, has a natural conversation about the things they care about — their favourite shows, local events, family, hobbies — and afterwards shows you that the call took place, how long it lasted and which topics came up. There is nothing to install: their phone rings, they pick up, and the conversation begins, opening with the disclosure that SilverFriend is an AI. From call to call, SilverFriend remembers what was discussed before and learns which topics they enjoy most, so every conversation feels personal rather than generic.

SilverFriend is designed for elderly people (typically 65-90) who live alone or spend much of their day without company — and for the adult children who worry about them. It's particularly helpful when distance, work, or daily life make it difficult to call every day yourself. The service works for anyone who can answer a phone, regardless of their comfort with technology.

Yes, always — and in the first sentence. Every call begins with the disclosure: “Hello [first name], it's SilverFriend, your AI companion.” We never present ourselves as a human, a carer, or a family member, and if your parent asks during the conversation, SilverFriend confirms it truthfully every time. In our experience it is exactly this openness that builds trust: your parent knows what they are talking to and can relax into the conversation. Most people are comfortable with it after the first few calls.

No — the opposite. SilverFriend is a bridge to more human connection, not a replacement for it. During conversations, if your parent mentions missing you or a sibling, SilverFriend can suggest connecting them directly. It also encourages participation in local community activities and events. The goal is to reduce the long, quiet stretches between your visits and calls — not to substitute for them.

No. SilverFriend is not a Hausnotruf (home emergency call system), not an emergency service and not a medical device. In a life-threatening emergency, please always call 112 yourself. The service is currently available for phone lines in Germany. SilverFriend replaces none of those services. We do not dispatch emergency responders, and the system never dials an emergency number itself. What SilverFriend does instead is called the wellbeing notice: after every call an automated check reviews the written call record for explicit signs of danger, and if something is flagged, a person on our team reads the result before the contact you registered receives a neutral message. In an acute exceptional case that person from our team calls your relative back and may, for numbers in Germany, call 112 themselves — a decision taken by a human being in an individual case, not a promised feature and not an automatic emergency call. That is observation with human review — not an emergency service and not medical monitoring.

Smart speakers wait for your parent to initiate. SilverFriend calls them proactively at a scheduled time — no commands to remember, no wake words to say, no device to set up. The conversations are also fundamentally different: instead of answering one-off questions, SilverFriend has an ongoing relationship with your parent. It remembers what they talked about last week, knows their interests, and brings up topics that are personally relevant to them. A smart speaker is a tool; SilverFriend is a companion.

SilverFriend currently supports conversations in German, English, and Spanish. The system adapts not just the language but also the cultural context — German users hear about ARD programmes and local Seniorentreffs, English users hear about BBC shows, and Spanish users get culturally relevant content. All three languages are fully supported across the website, the service, and the family dashboard.