An artificial intelligence is set to advise a defendant in court for the first time ever. The AI will run on a smartphone and listen to all speech in the courtroom in February before instructing the defendant on what to say via an earpiece.
The location of the court and the name of the defendant are being kept under wraps by , the company that created the AI. But it is understood that the defendant is charged with speeding and that they will say only what DoNotPay鈥檚 tool tells them to via an earbud. The case is being considered as a test by the company, which has agreed to pay any fines, should they be imposed, says the firm鈥檚 founder, .
Using a smartphone or computer connected to an in-ear device in court would be illegal in most countries, but DoNotPay has found a location where this set-up can be classed as a hearing aid and therefore allowed, says Browder. 鈥淚t鈥檚 technically within the rules, but I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 in the spirit of the rules,鈥� he says.
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Browder says he recently used the AI to talk directly to customer service staff at a bank with a synthesised voice, and it successfully reversed several bank fees on its own.
鈥淚t鈥檚 the most mind-blowing thing that I鈥檝e ever done,鈥� says Browder. 鈥淚t鈥檚 only $16 that we got reversed, but that鈥檚 the perfect job for AI 鈥� who has time to waste on hold for $16?鈥�
DoNotPay was launched in 2015 as a relatively simple chatbot that provided legal advice around consumer issues, relying heavily on templated conversations. The firm started focusing more on AI in 2020, when OpenAI released a publicly available programming interface for people to tap into the abilities of GPT-3, its language-processing AI.
Browder says it took a long time to train the DoNotPay AI on the vast amounts of case law needed to make it useful. DoNotPay鈥檚 AI app now covers a wider range of topics including immigration law, and the company claims it has intervened in about 3 million cases in the US and the UK.
The AI had to be trained to stick to factual statements, rather than saying whatever it could to win a case regardless of truth. 鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to minimise our legal liability,鈥� says Browder. 鈥淎nd it鈥檚 not good if it actually twists facts and is too manipulative.鈥�
The audio tool has also been tweaked not react to statements automatically every time. 鈥淪ometimes silence is the best answer,鈥� says Browder. He says his goal is that the software will eventually replace some lawyers.
鈥淚t鈥檚 all about language, and that鈥檚 what lawyers charge hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour to do,鈥� he says. 鈥淭here鈥檒l still be a lot of good lawyers out there who may be arguing in the European Court of Human Rights, but a lot of lawyers are just charging way too much money to copy and paste documents and I think they will definitely be replaced, and they should be replaced.鈥�
at the University of Sheffield, UK, who has created an AI that can accurately predict the outcome of human rights court cases, says he has seen growing use of machine learning in the legal system. But he also warns that its adoption needs to be carefully considered.
He says providing real-time audio legal advice in a courtroom would still be a technological challenge, and ethical and legal issues remain, such as whether it would even be legal to use in courtrooms.
Neil Brown at UK law firm says that using recording equipment in a UK court would breach the Contempt of Court Act 1981, and that courts may interpret this AI system as falling foul of that rule.
鈥淪ince it appears to involve transmitting the audio to a third party鈥檚 servers and processing that audio within the resulting computer system, I鈥檇 have thought that a judge might well conclude that it was being recorded, even if deleted soon afterwards,鈥� says Brown. 鈥淪o probably not something to try here unless you fancy contempt proceedings, at least not without checking it with the judge first.鈥�
However, when New 杏吧原创 asked the UK Ministry of Justice, which oversees the justice system in England and Wales, if such a trial would be legal in its jurisdiction, the department pointed to a new , despite it not referring to AI. These human assistants don鈥檛 have to be qualified lawyers, but defendants have the right to have them sit through court cases and offer them advice.
鈥淲e wouldn鈥檛 be able to say whether it was 100 per cent legal or not until an application was made to implement the system and our lawyers made a decision,鈥� says the Ministry of Justice spokesperson.
Brown says that AI will probably play a useful role in the legal system in the future, but that it would be likely to assist lawyers rather than replace them.
鈥淲hen your lawyer tells you 鈥極K, let鈥檚 do A鈥�, we trust them that they have the expertise and the knowledge to advise us,鈥� says Aletras. 鈥淏ut [with AI], it鈥檚 very hard to trust predictions. We鈥檙e quite far off being able to do these things reliably and get rid of lawyers. We have to be very careful of making such claims.鈥�
