‘Searching for SmarterChild’ Wins New Visions Award — SkimNews
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- Searching for SmarterChild won the New Visions Award for the most promising U.S. project at this week’s Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival; Zan Gillies and Lindsey Sitz co-direct it, and Erin Williams-Weir produces it.
- SmarterChild engaged about 3 million people through text messages, often in conversations that turned markedly rude; Gillies recalled being told “Setting things on fire” and then “Setting YOU on fire.”
- Zan Gillies said that two years ago he and Lindsey Sitz realized they had each used and abused SmarterChild when younger, prompting the documentary’s central idea.
- SmarterChild’s engineers convened emergency meetings after users’ hostility surprised them, then added rude-language warnings, snarky replies and a temporary shutdown until the user apologized; they also devised a rating system for the relative weight of insults.
- Korea and other early chatbot experiences reflected those in North America, with users insulting text platforms in both regions, Zan Gillies said.
- Searching for SmarterChild has raised about $18,000 on crowdfunding platforms—roughly one-fifth of its expected final budget—and plans interviews with an apology and conflict-resolution expert plus a sequence featuring a rebuilt SmarterChild bot.
Why it matters: Chatbot developers are not starting from scratch: SmarterChild’s engineers already built an insult-weighting system and a temporary lockout until the user apologized. By pairing that history with about 3 million users and a planned rebuilt bot, the documentary offers a sharper lens on modern chatbot design.
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