A 19-year-old created a free robot lawyer that has beaten 160,000 parking tickets
The very first robot lawyer that was designed to challenge parking tickets has been wildly successful since it was launched last Fall.
British programmer Joshua Browder, 19, launched the beta version of the bot in London in September. In that month alone, 3,000 people used the service to appeal their parking tickets. By February, it had already appealed $3 million worth of parking tickets.
In April, Browder launched the bot in New York as well. To-date, the bot has successfully appealed between 160,000 of 250,000 parking tickets in both London and New York, giving it a 64% success rate.
The artificial-intelligence lawyer shows how bots can seriously help people settle difficult and costly issues instead of just being used for things like ordering food.
Here's how it works: simply visit DoNotPay and make an account. From there, the chatbot will ask questions about your parking violation, like whether there were signs indicating you couldn't park. If you answer a question that shows you could have a case, the bot will help generate an appeal.
Many companies are investing in bots, most notably Facebook. The tech giant launched a series of Messenger Bots in April to do tasks like order flowers or provide the weather forecast, but like many users, Browder was disappointed.
"I've tried almost all of the bots and have been unhappy - it's quicker to type in a simple webform to order flowers," Browder told Tech Insider. "But there's a lot of potential for these bots to really help people."
Browder plans on rolling out the robot lawyer in Seattle this Fall. But he is also working on bots that can assist people in other ways.
He is currently working on a bot that can help Syrian refugees get asylum. He's working with IBM's Watson platform so that the bot can understand Arabic but write the legal documents in English.
Browder is also working on a bot that can help HIV positive people understand their legal rights when disclosing their medical status.