Seattle may be the next city for a “robot lawyer” that has helped people beat more than 160,000 traffic tickets in the United Kingdom and New York City.
According to VentureBeat, 19-year-old Stanford student Joshua Browder wants to bring his chat bot DoNotPay to Seattle this fall. Browder built the bot after receiving numerous parking tickets, he told the BBC. He also wanted to show that bots can help people.
DoNotPay launched in the United Kingdom last fall and later expanded to New York City. Browder said 160,000 out of 250,000 appeals have been successful and drivers saved more than $3 million.
The bot asks users a variety of questions, like who was driving, whether parking spots were well-signed and how big spaces were. Following the chat, the bot will determine if it makes sense to appeal the ticket. Then it will generate an appeal letter.
Browder is building other bots. One will help people with HIV understand their legal rights. Another helps people whose flights were delayed more than four hours collect compensation from airlines.
As part of the Highland Capital summer startup accelerator program, VentureBeat reports Browder is creating a bot that will help refugees apply for asylum, using IBM Watson to translate from Arabic to English.
DoNotPay will not be alone in fighting tickets in Seattle. Former Amazon engineer Alex Guirguis, his brother Chris, a Microsoft engineer, and friend Mark Mikhail, also at Amazon, started Off the Record in February 2015.
Off the Record requires users to pay a flat fee, but then it connects them with a lawyer and does all the work of contesting the ticket for them. DoNotPay is free, but it doesn’t contest the ticket for people; it gives them the necessary information to do it themselves.
