AI legal assistant feeds lines to defendants in court


A robotic AI legal advisor sitting in a courtroom

Artificial intelligence is now used for anything from generating art to mass surveillance. In a novel way of using the technology, an AI legal assistant will feed lines to a defendant for the first time in real court procedure.

Illegal in most countries, the AI software will interpret prosecutors’ statements and inform the defendant how to proceed. However, the AI program will reportedly be deployed in a country where this form of technology isn’t held in contempt of court.

Developed by DoNotPay, the software will be deployed for the entire case. As per NewScientist, the technology is only being used in a test case, and court proceedings are not its designed purpose.

DoNotPay initially designed the software for customer services. In the stead of human employees, the AI can argue with customers for you. However, the court trial is meant to show how powerful the software actually is.

During the test, the defendant will be instructed on what to say via an earpiece. However, if the defendant loses the case due to its legal counsel, DoNotPay will not ask for payment for using the AI legal assistant.

The software’s initial purpose has been shown off online before. In a video released on Twitter, DoNotPay founder Joshua Browder showed the software getting him a refund from Wells Fargo.

"Over Christmas, DoNotPay managed to create an AI deepfake clone of my voice," Browder said. "Then, with GPT, we got the bot to phone up Wells Fargo and successfully overturn some wire fees. This is the perfect use case for AI. Nobody has time to argue on the phone about $12!"

The main issue with AI software in the court room is inaccuracy. AI chatbots consistently make up false information; a recent issue saw AI software make up bogus claims and cite real scientists in generated essays. Disinformation is a huge plague that infects every AI’s neural net.

Browden believes that his AI product will be good enough to replace lawyers outright. He claimed: “It’s all about language, and that’s what lawyers charge hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour to do. A lot of lawyers are just charging way too much money to copy and paste documents."

With the inaccuracies surrounding AI generations, complete legal counsel via artificial intelligence doesn’t sound like a good idea. Nevertheless, we expect the technology to continue to be used in some form.

For more articles like this, take a look at our News and AI page.