DoNotPay Has To Pay $193K For Falsely Touting Untested AI Lawyer, FTC Says

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Among the first AI companies that the Federal Trade Commission has exposed as deceiving consumers is DoNotPay -- which initially was advertised as "the world's first robot lawyer" with the ability to "sue anyone with the click of a button." On Wednesday, the FTC announced that it took action to stop DoNotPay from making bogus claims after learning that the AI startup conducted no testing "to determine whether its AI chatbot's output was equal to the level of a human lawyer." DoNotPay also did not "hire or retain any attorneys" to help verify AI outputs or validate DoNotPay's legal claims.

DoNotPay accepted no liability. But to settle the charges that DoNotPay violated the FTC Act, the AI startup agreed to pay $193,000, if the FTC's consent agreement is confirmed following a 30-day public comment period. Additionally, DoNotPay agreed to warn "consumers who subscribed to the service between 2021 and 2023" about the "limitations of law-related features on the service," the FTC said. Moving forward, DoNotPay would also be prohibited under the settlement from making baseless claims that any of its features can be substituted for any professional service. "The complaint relates to the usage of a few hundred customers some years ago (out of millions of people), with services that have long been discontinued," DoNotPay's spokesperson said. The company "is pleased to have worked constructively with the FTC to settle this case and fully resolve these issues, without admitting liability."

Nah, they won't pay.

[devslash0]

Because they DoNotPay.

Re:Nah, they won't pay.

[Ol Olsoc]

Because they DoNotPay.

Their AI robot will now sue the FTC. With a single click of a button.

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

The question is, will it also be possible to *cancel* the suit with just a single click?

Re:

[echo123]

$193k seems like a slap-on-the-wrist fine for a web services company like that. How has their website [donotpay.com] or business really changed?

DoNotPay uses artificial intelligence to help you fight big corporations, protect your privacy, find hidden money, and beat bureaucracy.

Still, I thoroughly enjoy FTC enforcement stories on Slashdot. Lina Kahn [youtube.com] is taking names and kicking ass.

Re:

[hdyoung]

I can't imagine that they made much money. I'll bet that their website didn't generate a lot of traffic, so not a lot of ad revenue. And the only people to use a service like that are the "represent myself in court" types. So, basically only people who are really stupid or simply insane. And people like that generally don't have a lot of money to spend.

I'm gonna guess that the fine amounted to "a big chunk of their revenue".

And the company's claim that millions of people have used their service? Laug

Re:

[echo123]

I'm gonna guess that the fine amounted to "a big chunk of their revenue".

Here are two quotes from TFA to support my 'slap on the wrist' argument, (emphasis mine):

"The complaint relates to the usage of a few hundred customers some years ago (out of millions of people), with services that have long been discontinued," DoNotPay's spokesperson said.

DoNotPay has already proven that there is demand for the future that Ferguson painted. The company's spokesperson told Ars that millions had used their services, a

Re:

[Dr. Tom]

the "represent myself in court" type

whoa I didn't realize there were really people like that, wow you ALSO have a law degree wow but then why

Re:

[tlhIngan]

I can't imagine that they made much money. I'll bet that their website didn't generate a lot of traffic, so not a lot of ad revenue. And the only people to use a service like that are the "represent myself in court" types. So, basically only people who are really stupid or simply insane. And people like that generally don't have a lot of money to spend.

I'm gonna guess that the fine amounted to "a big chunk of their revenue".

And the company's claim that millions of people have used their service? Laughable.
F

Re:

[mysidia]

Probably because consumers aren't harmed back then from the older services; at least not severely. DoNotPay offering to help you dispute tickets interesting, but it was not complicated, and nothing you would necessarily need a lawyer for. The customers of a service like DoNotPay are Likely people who would not have hired a lawyer in the first place, and then they would be on their own - which may have had them in a worse position. "Just paying", unable to dispute.

I'm guessing if people got good ou

Re:

[Arrogant-Bastard]

I agree, this really does seem like merely a slap on the wrist. So while I'm glad that the FTC has taken some action, what I'd rather see is (a) forced shutdown of the company (b) confiscation of all assets (c) criminal prosecution of the executives for fraud. If that doesn't happen, then other con artists are going to observe this, (correctly) reason they can clone the scam and make a substantial profit before the FTC gets along to slapping them on the wrist.

Re:

[Local ID10T]

How has their website or business really changed?

The answer was already given. From the Fine Summary above:

DoNotPay agreed to warn "consumers who subscribed to the service between 2021 and 2023" about the "limitations of law-related features on the service," the FTC said.
Moving forward, DoNotPay would also be prohibited under the settlement from making baseless claims that any of its features can be substituted for any professional service.

Re:

[gosso920]

Exactly what I was thinking. Does the FTC think they'll be able to collect? I mean, it's right there in their name...

Probably worked BETTER than a lawyer

[io333]

Lawyers stepped in to shut that down before problematic

Re:

[DarkOx]

a lot of legal practice is built on trust, courts are slow. A lot of the penalties for filing nonsense are professional ones like being thrown out of the Bar. You can punish an individual for a truly fraudulent filing where they are making materially false statements to the court, but it would be sad to start just going after people for being 'wrong' even in ways that a professional never would be; at least not when it isn't a deliberate pattern of abuse.

The consequence of that would be to further remove a

And another LLM application gone

[gweihir]

Not a surprise. I guess except for "better search" (which not all LLMs do), there is very little left now.

Re:

[MpVpRb]

Yup, agreed
Today's AI is a great research project, and it seems likely that really useful stuff will be developed in the future
Current LLMs might be fun for entertainment, but not much else
Unfortunately, investors demand profits now, so expect a tsunami of half-baked AI crap to be inflicted on us and the most common tech support question will be ... "How can I turn this thing off"

Re:

[gweihir]

"How can I turn this thing off"

Hahaha, yes. I do expect some special-purpose LLMs to eventually become useful. "Coding assistant" is still too general. But, say, "GUI coding in Python with QT" or "file access in C" seems to be within reach. Or other relatively simple things with few pitfalls. But general LLMs are simply a failure and that is not really unexpected. Even Watson had hallucinations 15 years ago (or so) and it was what killed it for most applications. For example, Watson did devise somewhat better treatment plans for medical

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Gone for now. The most important thing a lawyer does is knowing a lot of laws and cases and seeing the right connections to the current case. That's a use-case that is well-suited for LLMs once they are tuned correctly and provided with the right data. I won't say they will stay a better search, but do a lot of work for professions like lawyers.

makes sense

[nomadic]

Makes sense BUT AI is absolutely going to be able to take over a lot of attorney work. Not now maybe, or even in 5 years, but 10 or 15 it's going to be able to outperform a lot of lawyers.

Re:makes sense

[phantomfive]

Not now maybe, or even in 5 years, but 10 or 15 it's going to be able to outperform a lot of lawyers.

I have a chart which helpfully explains the timeline you have laid out [xkcd.com].

Re:

[Malay2bowman]

I see it more as a calculator, and there has to be a human to verify that it's output is sound and that person (the actual lawyer) needs to be physically present in a courtroom. This "aI wIlL rEpLaCe lAwYeRs" is absolute nonsense, but if this is actually attempted, then things are much more broken than I thought. :-/

Re:

[nomadic]

Courtroom work makes up a tiny, tiny percentage of attorney work hours.

Re:

[EvilSS]

Not sure about lawyers, since they are firmly protected by bar and licensing requirements and guess what vocation is popular among those elected to office! Paralegal work, however, yes.

DoNotPay now has to pay

[Malay2bowman]

ZING!

Good service, got ahead of themselves

[bradley13]

For very simple legal problems, I have heard good things about DoNotPay. Contesting fines, that kind of thing.

They got ahead of themselves, thinking that they can auto-generate more complex legal documents. That was stupid, honestly, that was probably greed.

Doesn't this company have several hundred million

[TheStatsMan]

in capital? This fine is pointless.

thank you

[Dr. Tom]

OMB thank you so much I haven't had such a good laugh in a while

Request a change of venue

[OrangeTide]

Move the case to a jurisdiction that has AI judges.

draw your own conclusion

[argStyopa]

...that the FIRST entity the FCC goes after is a website that's automated the process of fighting the thousands of parking violations and petty bullshit moving violations issued by budget-starved police depts...and been reasonably successful as I understand.

Yeah, they're clearly the worst of the bad guys.