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This Robot Lawyer Could Help You Get Out of a Parking Ticket

By Stephanie Mlot PCmag

Stop trying to flirt your way out of traffic citations: A new artificial intelligence robot helps users contest parking tickets—for free.

Developed by 19-year-old, London-born Stanford University student Joshua Browder, DoNotPay is available online for UK and New York users.

"DoNotPay has launched the UK's first robot lawyer as an experiment," the app website said. "It can talk to you, generate documents, and answer questions. It is just like a real lawyer, but is completely free and doesn't charge any commission."

With a fresh driver's license in hand, Browder last year began racking up parking tickets in Britain. But instead of paying them, "I decided … I should try and fight," he said during a Medium Q&A session.

"Some were correctly issued and I paid for those. But for the ones that were incorrect, I decided to create an app to help people find the reasons why they were incorrectly given and fight them," he continued.

A small venture initially built as an experiment for family and friends, DoNotPay has now appealed more than $4 million in tickets over the past two years.

"The government don't like me very much, but people with parking tickets do!" Browder joked.

To get started, pick one of the given options for why you should not receive a parking ticket: permit problems, stolen car, urgent travel, diplomatic immunity, missing or incorrect details on the ticket, problems with signage, or other descriptions.

Then fill in a form with your name, summary of the offense, and penalty charge number, among any additional information needed to argue your case, and click "generate appeal."

According to The Guardian, in the 21 months since the free service launched, it has taken on 250,000 cases, and won 160,000, giving it a success rate of 64 percent.

DoNotPay could be launching next in Seattle, and may eventually expand to include flight delay compensation, the news site said.

Users can also find Browder's blockchain-based HIV application at the same site. HIV-positive people can prove in fewer than 30 seconds that they have disclosed their illness to sexual partners through a permanent and anonymous record.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.