AI agents help pageant contestants train—but not on stage yet

AI agents have historically found their footing in business and government contexts, but Smitte's pageant preparation signals a shift into personal-performance training. Her $150 investment represents a low-cost entry point for contestants to access round-the-clock coaching on multiple fronts—interview readiness, fitness, knowledge, and visual presentation. The split between her backstage AI use and onstage human expertise is telling: it reveals both the practical utility of AI tutoring and its current limitations in creative or nuanced tasks like live posing advice.

The broader pageant ecosystem reflects genuine ambivalence about AI's visible role. The Miss America organization's April Fools' joke about onstage AI problem-solving, and the "Miss AI" pageant's mixed reception (praised by some for celebrating diversity, criticized by others as a loss of human authenticity), underscore that audiences and organizers have not yet settled on AI's place in a competition built on human charisma and presence. Smitte's own framing—calling AI her "collaborator and thought partner" while insisting the public is "not ready to see the AI in front of the curtain yet"—captures this in-between moment: AI is useful behind the scenes, but its on-stage future remains contested.