When British-American entrepreneur Joshua Browder first launched his legal services chatbot DoNotPay in 2015, it was focused on a simple goal: Getting folks out of parking tickets. In the years since, Browder grew the business to a valuation of $210 million in July 2021, and expanded the small startup, which uses machine learning and automation to allow users to skip time-consuming but simple processes like canceling subscriptions, to automatically draft everything from divorce agreements to defamation letters. DoNotPay made waves earlier this month when it announced plans to bring its AI, fed through a pair of Apple Airpods, into live courtrooms. The case DoNotPay intended to fight on behalf of a client is due in court in February.
But on Wednesday, he announced the company was pivoting away from the complicated legal process and moving instead back to its core principles—namely, simple consumer support. Here, in a transcript lightly edited for clarity, Browder explains the situation.
Fast Company: This pivot away from convoluted legal issues must be pretty significant for DoNotPay. What’s going on?
Joshua Browder: We’ve had a lot of success with consumer rights. We got a successful refund from Comcast with these new AI products. And in December, we decided to take it farther and have a live courtroom case [using a robot lawyer]. But we got so much pushback from lawyers that we realised it was a distraction. [Ordinary Twitter users have also pointed out that the pivot is part of a typical tech u-turn.] There’s not a lawyer who will get out of bed for a $500 refund. And that’s really where we should focus; so that they don’t come after us for the other stuff, which is a distraction.
FC: The decision to do this is interesting, because the founding principle of DoNotPay was less focused on legal work and more on consumers.
JB: Yeah, and I think we got distracted. It’s important as an entrepreneur to admit and change direction when you’re going in the wrong direction, and course correct. I think that specifically GPT-style products really have a big use in consumer rights. It’s interesting to see all the lawyers who were against our court room stuff are cheering us on the consumer rights angle. We don’t want to make enemies. We just want to help people.
FC: It’s notable you keep mentioning GPT. To what extent does the rise of and ubiquity of ChatGPT and other technologies like it factor into your decision?
JB: It allows us to go after higher-level consumer rights disputes where you don’t have to just submit a letter. In some cases, you have to go back and forth with the company. So imagine communicating with a hospital over email about a bill: That’s a great use case for GPT, because it can respond and craft arguments. There are use cases that can be handled deterministically with letters; but more importantly, the higher-level cases where you go back and forth are the perfect outcome for GPT.
FC: How do you intend on folding GPT tech into DoNotPay in the future?
JB: We’re building a Chrome extension that can fill in forms for users. We’re using ourselves to build new products, like our medical bills product. It will be used over forms, email, and online chat. Those are the three areas that we will be communicating through.
GPT is really good at digesting information. And even that’s half the battle. With our medical bills product, the first thing we have to do is we have to figure out the prices of all medical treatments in the U.S. for different services. They’re called CPT codes. There’s a law that passed in January 2022, called the No Surprises Act, which means hospitals across the U.S. have to publish that data.
So in theory, this is great, all the data is out there. But these hospitals, not wanting to actually properly comply with the law, publish the prices, but they’re . . . in a really obscure format, so that people can’t understand them. So one use case that we’re using GPT for is we’re putting all that data in and we’re saying standardize it, and it goes through all the documents and gets the correct information. Getting the information is half the battle, and that’s why this AI is so important.
FC: When can folks expect to be using these tools?
JB: Two weeks ago, we released our first GPT product on our website. It simplifies terms and conditions and lease agreements. So [it’s] live right now, any consumer can upload a lease for or the terms and conditions. And GPT will go ahead, find all the red flags, and explain those red flags to the consumer.
We’ve only had it live for a few weeks, but it’s already done 10,000 terms of service. That’s really good, and lawyers don’t seem to have a problem with that because no one reads the terms of service.
FC: Do you think the legal field is worried about GPT and DoNotPay using ChatGPT?
JB: I think big companies are worried because they know that no one has the resources to fight over $50. But GPT can automate fighting back. If I was in the Comcast refunds department, I would be worried. There are lots of good lawyers doing great work, such as human rights lawyers and Supreme Court lawyers, but there are others who are on billboards charging hundreds of dollars for copying and pasting documents. And those are the ones that we want to replace.
The long-term goal is that we want to automate all of consumer rights. The average person should not have to see a lawyer for any reason, unless there’s a serious issue like they’re being accused of breaking into someone’s house. A normal person shouldn’t even have to know what a lawyer does.
FC: How do you see DoNotPay changing in the coming years—or is this just a return to the original mission?
JB: We want to be sitting on the consumer’s shoulder, protecting them. Right now, people come to DoNotPay with a problem: They say, “The inflight Wi-Fi didn’t work.” But in the future, what we want to do is have the robot lawyer almost sitting on their shoulder watching out for them, monitoring everything in their life. And instead of your coming to the robot lawyer, it just sends you an email one day and says: “I’ve been monitoring your internet speed. It was too slow, and I got you a refund.” That’s what these big corporations have. They have whole legal departments, a general counsel, and that’s what we want to bring to the consumer.
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