Free online chatbot successfully challenges 160,000 parking tickets in London and New York

The brainchild of Joshua Browder, a London-born student at Stanford University, DoNotPay allows users to fight their parking tickets through a simple messaging interface.

The program gathers information from the user through a series of questions before guiding them through the appeals procedure.

In its first 21 months, DoNotPay has won 160,000 of its 250,000 cases – a 64 per cent success rate for over $4 million worth of parking tickets.

Mr Browder told VentureBeat: “I think the people getting parking tickets are the most vulnerable in society. These people aren’t looking to break the law. I think they’re being exploited as a revenue source by the local government.”

The self-taught programmer coded the bot after being handed 30 parking tickets in and around London – the formulaic appeals process was perfect for an AI.

Mr Browder is looking at the possibility of a developer platform that requires no coding knowledge and could lead to the creation of other chatbots who dispense basic legal advice for free.