[AP]
[AP]

A British firefighter who took on a lawsuit without a lawyer — relying solely on ChatGPT — has won back lottery winnings he had handed to his ex-girlfriend.

Craig Titchner, an airport firefighter, won 200,000 pounds (about 400 million won) in November 2019 on a scratch card called "Winter Wonderlines," according to British tabloid The Sun on Thursday.

In 2022, Titchner sent the winnings to his then-girlfriend, who was financially savvy, and asked her to invest the money on his behalf.

After the relationship ended, she refused to return the money. Titchner, a father of two, sought legal help but said lawyers demanded an "astronomical" sum in consultation fees.

He turned to ChatGPT instead, using it to prepare his case step by step before representing himself in court.

His ex-girlfriend argued in court that the money was a gift, claiming Titchner had been controlling and abusive toward her.

The court found her account was supported by little evidence — she had failed to prove the winnings were a gift and had not submitted bank records. The court ruled in Titchner's favor last week.

"It was a gamble going it alone, but I thought I had nothing to lose," Titchner said. "Without ChatGPT, I probably wouldn't have won."

On the lottery win itself, he said, "Who wouldn't be excited about that kind of money?" — but added, "If you make mistakes and act naively, you end up learning a very expensive lesson."

A court logo. [Yonhap]
A court logo. [Yonhap]

AI-assisted self-representation in court has also been documented in South Korea.

A case in which a person identified only as A won both a civil and a criminal dispute using only AI — after dismissing a hired lawyer — came to light in a YTN report in May.

The law firm employing the dismissed lawyer filed a civil suit demanding an additional 5.1 million won in unpaid legal fees, while the lawyer separately filed a criminal complaint alleging that A's protests amounted to intimidation.

After two other lawyers declined to take the case — citing reluctance to go up against the same attorney — A chose to handle both matters alone.

The outcome was a clean sweep for A. Police closed the criminal case without charges, and A also prevailed in the civil suit.

A said AI guided the entire process, from analyzing the complaint and reviewing legal arguments to drafting all court documents.

[Reuters]
[Reuters]

In the United States, a story of someone using ChatGPT and Perplexity to fight off an eviction came to light last October.

Federal civil case filing statistics show that self-represented litigants accounted for nearly 17 percent of cases as of late September last year, far above the long-term average of around 11 percent.

As the share of AI-assisted self-representation rises, so too are the downsides.

In March, a lawsuit was filed against OpenAI alleging that ChatGPT had effectively acted as an unlicensed attorney. OpenAI responded by submitting a statement to the court saying ChatGPT is not a lawyer and does not engage in legal practice.


dbsdn1110@heraldcorp.com