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.'

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