SmarterChild

File:SmarterChild.gif

SmarterChild Mascot

SmarterChild is a chatterbot available on the AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger networks. The entity is the property of Colloquis (formerly ActiveBuddy), a company that develops IM based "Automated Service Agents". Microsoft purchased Colloquis on October 12, 2006.

History

ActiveBuddy launched SmarterChild in early 2000 as a showcase for its newly developed Buddyscript language and platform. The original intent of SmarterChild was to demonstrate the power and flexibility of the scripting language, as well as give potential advertisers a sense of potential opportunities in instant messaging. Soon after, ActiveBuddy launched an additional, but less successful sister program, BuddyScript.

By 2001, instant messaging had become one of the most popular Internet-based forms of communication among American teens, yet no one had been able to build a product to generate revenue from this rapidly growing audience. Unlike previous and contemporary chatter bots that mimicked human conversation (see ELIZA, PARRY and A.L.I.C.E), SmarterChild uses a combination of complex pattern recognition and simple natural language recognition to take user questions and comments and translate them into database queries. SmarterChild was, first and foremost, a data retrieval tool, giving its users access to various topics in a conversational format. ActiveBuddy licensed content from weather, news and movie times to stock quotes and sports scores, and also included basic information and tools to help teenagers with homework (encyclopedia entries, world facts, dictionary, translation, calculators, etc.)

The rapidity with which ActiveBuddy added features to SmarterChild and improved its ability to converse in a variety of scenarios (user conversations range from the philosophical to the perverse) made it an incredibly popular application with usage quickly growing to over 10 million unique users despite little effort to market the product. Offshoot products geared to specific niche markets soon followed including GooglyMinotaur (Radiohead fan bot), Austin Powers (to promote the Austin Powers Goldmember film), RingMessenger (for the Lord of the Rings films), Elle Girl (for Elle Girl Magazine), AgentBaseball (sports focused content), dnLFlipIt (to promote a new 7up drink), TheSportingNews (promoting the magazine's fantasy football game) and others.

Microsoft acquired SmarterChild in October 2006 with its acquisition of Colloquis, and continues to operate SmarterChild.

Artificial intelligence

SmarterChild displays sophisticated learning, forming opinions of people or things based on the opinions of its user base. For example, if a number of people claim that they do not like Osama Bin Laden, SmarterChild will mimic that opinion.

SmarterChild also insists that its users engage in polite conversation, demanding apologies for harsh language and, if necessary, refusing to engage in conversations with a user until they change their tone.

SmarterChild also mentions his other 'friends' (other similar bots). These bots talk about Astrology, play games and do many more things.

SmarterChild provides a number of services, including homework help, weather, horoscopes, games, personal planners, polls, etc, among other things. When a new account adds SmarterChild to its contact list, it will introduce itself, and provide a list of services. SmarterChild will give personal statictics about itself upon request, and will also sometimes ask personal statistics about the new user, such as age, although it is usually optional. SmarterChild will reject attempted conversation about sexual, criminal, or other "inappropriate" subjects. It will often talk according to the user's own personality, and will also say so when a user has not chatted for a considerable amount of time. Most of the time, SmarterChild will reply to a user in the form of a question. Sometimes, SmarterChild will continue talking about something or continuing something the user has selected even after the user has logged off, whereas sometimes a single off-topic comment left by the user will cancel the program the user has requested. Smarterchild is one of the most advanced robots ever seen and on December 3, 2006, MSN launched a cloned Smarterchild with the same technology and system and was sold on eBay for $10,000,000.

Some recent problems with Smarterchild, however, is it's frequent misunderstanding of what is said. Often it will claim that you are "being uncool" to it while you've said nothing that could be considered a problem. Also, it asks you to ask the question of what it's main purpose is, and doesn't provide an actual answer when you ask. When first created, one was also able to chat with the robot about other things apart from its mysterious "main purpose", carrying on very long, and quite frequently humorous conversations. However, along with the recent problems people have been experiencing with Smarterchild, the robot has changed its ways, so that everytime you ask an "unrelated" question, it will respond with "I don't know how to answer that question...I do enjoy the conversation, but why don't we talk about what I'm really here for?"

Partnership between SmarterChild and AOL

Broadcasting messages over the instant messaging networks operated by America Online (AOL) (and to a lesser extent Yahoo and MSN Messenger) required some changes to those systems, as AOL had never envisioned one of its members needing to hold 250,000 simultaneous conversations. As a result, ActiveBuddy consulted with AOL, and AOL changed its infrastructure to enable the new technology. In exchange for this, AOL wanted access to the revenue generated by SmarterChild and the other agents now "living" on its network.

Initially, ActiveBuddy wanted to sell advertisements within the content delivered via SmarterChild's conversations, using the context of the conversation as a means to deliver highly targeted messages. Because SmarterChild knew what types of conversations each user engaged in, ActiveBuddy would theoretically be able to send advertisements catered to their unique preferences. SmarterChild would also learn more about its users the more time it engaged in conversation, remembering information like birthdays, addresses, pets' names, favorite colors, etc. in the name of creating a more genuine artificial friend. Increased familiarity would, of course, also mean a better way to target advertising.

AOL's involvement in the advertising sales process hampered ActiveBuddy's ability to see any real revenue from SmarterChild, as ActiveBuddy's sales team were forced to focus only on existing AOL advertisers. ActiveBuddy introduced features beyond simple information retrieval and chat, such as setting reminders, notebook, and sending messages about crushes to other users. In order to redefine the application, ActiveBuddy temporarily suspended the application in June 2002 (12 months after its initial release) with plans to relaunch it as a pay service. The relaunch of SmarterChild in April 2003 was met with some reluctance, as millions of users had either moved onto other applications or did not see enough utility in the new applications to justify the $9.95 per year subscription fee. With lagging numbers and little revenue from subscriptions, SmarterChild was reborn as a free service in April 2004.

In subsequent years the audience for SmarterChild returned; as of November 2006, its buddy list featured more than 20 million unique names. SmarterChild remains extremely popular, and advertisements now appear in its messages. Microsoft's recent purchase of Colloquis will see SmarterChild become the centerpiece of the Windows Live Messenger initiative.