The company DoNotPay relied on ChatGPT to design an “AI lawyer”. The company wants to use the tool in real trials. DoNotPay is even targeting the Supreme Court and offering $1 million to any lawyer who agrees to repeat the AI’s sentences.
The ChatGPT craze at the end of 2022 put text-generating AIs back in the spotlight. The bluffing progress of algorithms can give the impression that artificial intelligence would be able to replace humans in many areas, without us realizing it.
The reality is a bit more nuanced. What about in the legal field? Could an AI play the role of a lawyer, without anyone realizing it?
“The world’s first robot lawyer” created with ChatGPT?
A company is convinced of this and wants to try to prove it. For the first time, it is therefore in the role of a lawyer that an AI could try to slip into a real trial. The information, first reported by NewScientist on January 4, 2023, was confirmed by Gizmodo January 7. It is the company DoNotPay, which is boasts to have invented “the first robot lawyer in the world”, who created this AI. Using a headset, the company intends to use it during a trial to blow arguments in order to defend a defendant. In this case, it is a case related to speeding, which is expected to go to court in the United States (we just know that it will not be in California) in February 2023. We do not know more details, in particular on the identity of the accused.
Originally, DoNotPay was created as a chatbot in 2015, which advised its users on administrative and legal matters. According to our colleagues, since its creation, DoNotPay has helped solve 2 million cases in all. With the rise of ChatGPT in 2020, the company decided to move more towards AI and evolve its tool. Its “Lawyer AI” is now designed based on GPT-3.
One can wonder about the method that the company intends to use. As Gizmodo raises, DoNotPay is likely well aware that this maneuver could violate the law in the United States. As in many other countries around the world, phones and other internet-connected devices are generally not allowed in court. It is also to try to circumvent the ban that DoNotPay intends to rely on headphones. According to information obtained by our colleagues, the ploy will consist of using accessibility standards in this court, to have the presence of headphones accepted. But, in any case, Joshua Browder does not hide from the fact that no one in the court will be informed of the assistance provided by the AI during the hearing, using this object.
$1 million offered to lawyer who will repeat AI sentences in Supreme Court
Not only does DoNotPay want its AI to debut as a lawyer this way, but the startup is already aiming further. Joshua Browder, CEO of DoNotPay, said he wanted the tool to be used in the Supreme Court of the United States. ” DoNotPay will offer any lawyer or person $1,000,000 for an upcoming case in the United States Supreme Court to wear AirPods and let our robot lawyer argue the case by repeating exactly what he says », detailed on Twitter Joshua Browder.
” We have cases coming up in the Municipal (Traffic) Court next month. But haters will say ‘traffic court is too simple for GPT‘”, continues the CEO. However, like many jurisdictions, the Supreme Court prohibited any electronic device in the hearing room, when a hearing is in progress (this concerns computers, cameras, telephones or smartphones, connected watches, etc.). Again, the CEO of DoNotPay rely on on accessibility rules for the lawyer to use headphones during the hearing.
