The “world’s first robot lawyer” powered by artificial intelligence (AI) will take on a court case in Fabruary, helping a defendant fight a traffic ticket.
DoNotPay, the company that developed the AI, dubs it “the world’s first robot lawyer.” It will run on a smartphone and listen to court arguments in real time then advise the defendant what to say.
The makers of the robot lawyer did not reveal the defendant’s name or the location of the unprecedented hearing regarding a speeding ticket.
According to the science and technology publication New Scientist, the defendant will only say what the AI tells them to say in court.
The British-American founder and CEO of DoNoPay, Joshua Browder, says that the company has agreed to pay any fines if the case is lost.
Browder, a computer scientist founded DoNotPay in 2015 as a chatbot to offer legal counsel to customers facing late fees or fines. However, the company switched to AI in 2020.
According to Browder, it took a long time to teach DoNotPay’s AI assistant a wide range of case law and make sure the app tells the truth. The company is also trying to minimize legal liability and has no desire to see the robot distort the facts or is overly manipulative.
The software of the AI app was modified so that it does not react automatically to everything it hears in court. Instead, it will observe and evaluate the arguments before giving the defendant instructions on how to respond.
DoNoPay promises users to “fight corporations, beat bureaucracy, and sue anyone at the press of a button,” in addition to serving as a legal assistant in court.
Browder explained that his ultimate objective is for his app to completely replace some lawyers to save defendants money. “The goal of this company is to make the $200 billion legal profession free for consumers,” Browder said.
