DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says
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Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says
#2Honestly not that surprised, the only surprising thing to me is how little of a slap on the wrist this feels like.
It felt like a shaky premise at best as far back as I can remember. Even "standard" things often have many intricacies that a person might not know to say, and it may not let them know/ask them about it.
As an example, think of all the questions TurboTax et. al ask about taxes.
Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says
#3Good, AI shouldn't be anywhere near anything where accountability matters...
Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says
#4>DoNotPay also did not "hire or retain any attorneys" to help verify AI outputs or validate DoNotPay's legal claims.
Wow, that's brave. Create a wrapper around ChatGPT, call it a lawyer, and never check the output. $193k fine seems like peanuts.
Sometimes I think about where I would be in life if I had no moral or ethical qualms. I'd probably be running a company like this.
Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says
#5I am honestly surprised the fine is not more. We need to see more of these come out as AI is shoved dangerously into places thanks to the ability to use it with little to no technical knowledge.
Especially when you are really just shoving data into an LLM and expecting a response to do some job, you are not training it to do a specific task.
Like the home buying AI that was on HN yesterday.
Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says
#6> DoNotPay also did not "hire or retain any attorneys" to help verify AI outputs or validate DoNotPay's legal claims. Wow, that's brave. Create a wrapper around ChatGPT, call it a lawyer, and never check the output. $193k fine seems like peanuts. Sometimes I think about where I would be in life if I had no moral or ethical qualms. I'd probably be running a company like this.
DoNotPay predates GPT by quite a bit -- it used to be pretty positively received on HN e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822289
Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says
#7"In 2021, Browder reported that DoNotPay had 250K subscribers; in May 2023, Browder said that DoNotPay had “well over 200,000 subscribers”.
To date, DoNotPay has resolved over 2 million cases and offers over 200 use cases on its website. Though DoNotPay has not disclosed its revenue, it charges $36 every two months. Given this, it can be estimated that DoNotPay is generating $54 million in annual revenue, assuming that all 250K users subscribe for 1 year."[1]
$193K seems like a pittance compared to the money they're making off of this.
Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says
#8I love the quote they included in their ads, purportedly from the Los Angeles Time but "actually from a high-schooler’s opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times’ High School Insider":
> "what this robot lawyer can do is astonishingly similar—if not more—to what human lawyers do."
Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says
#9I am honestly surprised the fine is not more. We need to see more of these come out as AI is shoved dangerously into places thanks to the ability to use it with little to no technical knowledge. Especially when you are really just shoving data into an LLM and expecting a response to do some job, you are not training it to do a specific task. Like the home buying AI that was on HN yesterday.
The fine was about false advertising, not dangerousness. Three of the commissioners signed on to concurring statements emphasizing that they are not opposed in principle to the use of AI in law. (https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/p...) (https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/p...)
Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says
#10I love the quote they included in their ads, purportedly from the Los Angeles Time but "actually from a high-schooler’s opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times’ High School Insider": > "what this robot lawyer can do is astonishingly similar—if not more—to what human lawyers do."
To be fair if legal paperwork follows a standard process with standard information, a "robot" can complete many orders of magnitude more than any human lawyer. (I'm also not a lawyer and have no idea if this line of thinking is applicable.)