An artificially intelligent robot lawyer was to be the first of its kind to help a defendant fight a traffic ticket in court this February. We said that it was going to be, in the past tense, since recently its own CEO has reported multiple threats from bar associations.
Joshua Browder, CEO of DoNotPay, said the company’s AI creation runs on a smartphone, listens to the arguments of the court and formulates answers for the defendant. The lawyer tells the defendant what to say in real time, through a headset.
As Browder explains, the company artificial intelligence it has already used AI-generated forms and chatbots to help people get refunds for broken plane Wi-Fi, reduce bills and claim parking tickets, among other things.
In all, the company has relied on these AI templates to win more than 2 million customer service disputes and court cases on behalf of individuals against institutions and organizations, it added. This rookie lawyer robot was going to take his first case on February 22, but It seems that finally everything stays on stand-by.
The AI-powered lawyer robot that is currently unemployed
The company’s “lawyer robot” is powered by various AI text generators, such as ChatGPT and DaVinci, retrained to know the law. A defendant who used this technology before a court he would wear smart glasses to record court proceedings, as well as a headset that would allow the AI to tell him what to say.
“DoNotPay AI will whisper in someone’s ear exactly what to say. We will publish the results and share more after it happens,” explained its CEO.
However, we may never know how this robot will fare in court, because a few days later, Browder announced that DoNotPay was postponing its court case. after receiving threats of imprisonment by prosecutors from the bar association from the state if he went ahead with his plan.
And it is that, we start from the basis that this technology is not legal in most courts. Some states require all parties to consent to being recorded, which rules out the possibility of a robot lawyer walking into many courtrooms. Of the 300 cases that DoNotPay considered to test its robot lawyer, only two were viable.
“Even if it wasn’t going to happen, the threat of criminal charges was enough to make us give it up. The letters have become so frequent that we thought it was just a diversion and we should move on,” he explains.
The ultimate goal, according to Browder, is democratize legal representation by making it free for those who cannot afford it, eliminating in some cases the need for expensive lawyers. But since artificial intelligence is illegal in many courts, he doesn’t expect to be able to commercialize the product any time soon.
