An AI chatbot is heading to a real US courtroom

What if your next court attorney was just an earbud whispering legal arguments directly into your head?

Legal tech startup DoNotPay is about to test that exact scenario in an upcoming US court hearing, as first reported by New Scientist. The company plans to arm an unnamed defendant with a smartphone running its AI program to contest a routine speeding ticket.

An AI co-pilot in the courtroom

The setup functions like an undercover operation. During the hearing, the smartphone listens directly to the courtroom arguments as the judge and prosecution speak.

The AI then generates real-time responses and feeds them straight to the defendant through an earpiece. The defendant simply repeats the AI's words back to the court.

DoNotPay has been around since 2015, training its models on mountains of case law to help people navigate red tape. Just last month, the startup added tools to negotiate lower bills and cancel subscriptions without dealing with customer service reps.

Taking this technology into an active courtroom obviously raises legal eyebrows. DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder admitted that while the stunt violates the spirit of court rules, they tracked down an unspecified jurisdiction where wearing the earpiece technically falls within written regulations.

To seal the deal, DoNotPay agreed to cover the defendant's speeding fine if the appeal fails. Still, academics remain skeptical about relying on black-box bots. Nikos Aletras, an AI researcher at the University of Sheffield, pointed out that people trust human lawyers based on proven expertise, while trusting an AI's courtroom predictions is a much taller order.

Why it matters

We think this trial is both a brilliant publicity stunt and a legitimate mirror held up to an inaccessible justice system.

With median lawyer pay hovering just below $127,000 in 2020, regular consumers simply cannot afford professional representation for minor civil disputes. Winnable cases routinely get abandoned because the cost of hiring counsel dwarfs the original ticket.

If algorithmic assistance can help regular people push back against petty fines, that levels the playing field significantly. However, using live generative tools in front of a judge is a massive gamble. Unlike customer service chatbots, courtrooms carry strict contempt rules and zero tolerance for hallucinations.

DoNotPay can easily afford to cover one speeding ticket to prove a point. But as soon as these systems move beyond staged demonstrations, judicial regulators will almost certainly rewrite the rules to keep AI out of the courtroom.