{"slug": "searching-for-smarterchild-kickstarter", "title": "‘Searching for SmarterChild’ Kickstarter", "summary": "Documentary filmmakers Lindsey Sitz and Zan Gillies are seeking funding on Kickstarter for 'Searching for SmarterChild,' a film about the AOL Instant Messenger chatbot that once had 30 million users. The campaign has one week remaining and is short of its primary goal.", "body_md": "After my reading my [posts earlier today](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/07/08/) about ELIZA, the first “hit” chatbot from the 1960s, DF reader *AP* sent me a link to the Kickstarter page for *Searching for SmarterChild*, a project from documentary filmmakers Lindsey Sitz and Zan Gillies to make a movie about SmarterChild, an AOL Instant Messenger chatbot that once had 30 million “friends” (a.k.a. users). I don’t recall ever hearing of SmarterChild before, let alone using it. (I think I was on a very different level of the Internet back then.)\n\nBut this looks like a great indie nerd documentary. The Kickstarter campaign has just one week left and they’re a wee bit short of their primary goal, and quite a bit short of their stretch goals. I just chipped in. Maybe you should too.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/searching-for-smarterchild-kickstarter", "canonical_source": "https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smarterchild/searching-for-smarterchild-a-feature-documentary/creator", "published_at": "2026-07-08 20:02:10+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-08 20:19:12.531604+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Lindsey Sitz", "Zan Gillies", "SmarterChild", "AOL Instant Messenger", "Kickstarter"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/searching-for-smarterchild-kickstarter", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/searching-for-smarterchild-kickstarter.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/searching-for-smarterchild-kickstarter.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/searching-for-smarterchild-kickstarter.jsonld"}}