The person who created a chatbot that helped overturned over a 100,000 parking fines and helped people apply for emergency housing is turning the bot to helping refugees claim asylum in Canada and the United States.
Joshua Browder, the creator of DoNotPay, describes the bot as the first robot lawyer in the world. He says the bot is giving free legal aid to users via a chat interface that’s easy to use. The bot, which uses Facebook Messenger, is now capable of helping refugees perform tasks such as help refugees fill in immigration applications in Canada and the US. In the UK, the bot helps refugees apply for asylum support.
Huge and exciting news! DoNotPay will now allow refugees in UK, US and Canada to automatimatically claim asylum! March 6, 2017
The bot speaks to users and asks them questions. It also records their responses.
Browder said there is a huge problem among immigration lawyers. He continued to say the problem is much of the lawyers’ time is spent on filling out forms and not on the legal complexities of the case. He said the bot takes down details from individuals and automatically fills out the forms.
DoNotPay will not store any sensitive data. In fact, after it takes down a user’s information, it will delete it within 10 minutes of the transaction being completed.
Browder is hoping to improve the bot. He wants it to be able to translate languages and he wants to support WhatsApp in the future. Those who will benefit from the bot the most will be people who can’t make it to a location where assistance is available to them or for refugees that have trouble figuring out how to fill out a form. However, Browder does believe this initial version of the bot will be useful because of the current political climate.
