First time in History! An AI Robot to defend a human in Court

AI robot to defend a human? DoNotPay says its robot lawyer can deliver the arguments a defendant needs

"Fight corporations, beat bureaucracy, and sue anyone at the press of a button", reads the homepage of DonotPay App, an AI company that develops legal services chatbots. The caption describes what its new bot and what it can do. They have developed an AI Robot to defend a human in court.  It is literally a kind of digital lawyer that can be loaded into your very favourite hand held device. A defendant in a court proceeding can take its help in suggesting the right arguments and win the case. It will take up a case in February as legal assistant to help the defendant fight the case for traffic tickets. The AI lawyer assistant will hear the arguments in real time and deliver the counter arguments through a headphone. The defendant will only say what his robot lawyer suggests him. The company is so confident of its product that it promised to cover all the fines should the case goes in other direction.

DoNotPay was launched in 2015 by Joshua Browder, a Stanford University Computer Science grad, as a chatbot that can help with giving legal advice in cases such as paying late fees and fines. It slowly evolved into an AI based application in 2020. He said it is a well trained tool that took pretty long time to learn the nuances of law, procedures and the wide range of topics. He said they took all sort of measures to make the app only spell arguments based on facts. "We're trying to minimize our legal liability. And it's not good if it actually twists facts and is too manipulative", said Browder. Like a seasoned lawyer, it knows how not to react to everything that transacts in the court. It listens the arguments first and only then delivers the instructions. Browder opines it has potential for giving lawyers a run for their money. He adds, "It's all about language, and that's what lawyers charge hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour to do," he said.

Explaining how the app works, he says, the AI robot asks for the central issue, looks for a loophole in the law and converts it into a litigation and send it to the concerned organization or upload to a website. He says, the lawyers who would be arguing for human rights; but the fact remains that most of them are doing copy-pasting documents, and they would replaced by legal bots in future. The AI bots provide sound legal advice doesn't exclude the possibility that they can go rogue. DoNotPays AI bot is only in the experimental stage and if such bots take charge or even remotely help in legal processes, there will be huge implications in the form of liability and compensation.