A man successfully sued his landlord over a deposit money dispute - with the help of ChatGPT.
Chris Maloney, 23, and his girlfriend Nadia Syed, 22, moved out of their apartment in Amherst, New York, in July.
Following the move, their landlord deducted £770 ($1k) from their deposit for cleaning and repair costs.
As tenants, Chris and Nadia already had a negative experience when their landlord took months to replace a window.
So, when money was deducted from their deposit, Chris decided to fight back.
He ran their tenancy agreement thought ChatGPT and the AI tool found that in New York, deposits cannot exceed one month's rent while the couple had paid a month and a half.
Without representation, Chris decided to take his landlord to court and used ChatGPT to build his case.
Both parties presented their case before a judge on Oct 17 and last week Chris received the judgement in his favour - awarding him £993 ($1,180).
Chris Maloney, 23, and his girlfriend Nadia Syed, 22, moved out of their apartment in Amherst, New York, in July.
Following the move, their landlord deducted £770 ($1k) from their deposit for cleaning and repair costs.
As tenants, Chris and Nadia already had a negative experience when their landlord took months to replace a window.
So, when money was deducted from their deposit, Chris decided to fight back.
He ran their tenancy agreement thought ChatGPT and the AI tool found that in New York, deposits cannot exceed one month's rent while the couple had paid a month and a half.
Without representation, Chris decided to take his landlord to court and used ChatGPT to build his case.
Both parties presented their case before a judge on Oct 17 and last week Chris received the judgement in his favour - awarding him £993 ($1,180).
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FunTranscript
00:00Hi, my name is Christopher Maloney. I'm 23 years old and I currently live in New York and work in
00:06tech. I recently took my landlord, former landlord, to Small Claims Court over an illegally collected
00:12deposit and I successfully used ChatGPT to help me navigate the legal process and prepare my case.
00:19When I moved into the property, my landlord promised to fix a broken window in the bedroom
00:25that we noticed during our initial walkthrough in July. Unfortunately, that repair didn't happen
00:32until February of the following year, leaving me and my partner to endure freezing winter
00:37temperatures in the apartment. After I moved out, I wasn't even considering legal action.
00:43However, when my landlord sent an email accusing my partner and me of being filthy and then made
00:50excessive and questionable deductions from our deposit, I felt compelled to investigate further.
00:56Recovering the deposit money felt like an uphill battle, so I decided to run the lease agreement
01:02through ChatGPT to see if it could find anything concrete to build a case on. That's when I
01:08discovered that the deposit itself had been collected in violation of New York's tenant
01:13protection laws. These laws state that you cannot charge more than one month's rent as a security
01:18deposit. So from there, I realized I had the tools to fight back. So the court process was a bit
01:26intimidating. Initially, it just involved a bit of paperwork filing and showing what I was
01:32claiming, and the court was very helpful, as was ChatGPT, in preparing this. It was stressful,
01:39but I would get home from work every day, and I'd get right to work gathering stuff up,
01:45consulting the internet, consulting ChatGPT, and really making sure that I was covering
01:51all my bases. The day for court eventually came, and it was intense. I'd never been in
01:57a courtroom before. I had no idea how it really worked. I had a half-decent idea from the internet
02:03and ChatGPT of what to expect, but small claims is a bit more informal than one might expect
02:11compared to regular courts. So that took some getting used to, but I presented evidence
02:18that the deposit had been illegally collected, outlined how the delayed repair created unlivable
02:24conditions during the winter, and despite a spirited but ultimately baseless argument from
02:34my landlord that I owed significant amounts of money, the judge ultimately ruled in my favor,
02:40awarding me $1,180 and dismissing the landlord's counterclaim in its entirety. Ultimately,
02:47it feels like a victory, not just for me, but for tenants and the implications of the case and of
02:56AI, and it means a lot to me that after many, many years, all of history, people have not had
03:05the tools to defend themselves against landlords. Before the internet, let alone AI, you could go to
03:13your library and pull out a big legal book and try to find the exact law that specifically applies
03:21to you, whereas now I could just hand it over to an AI, read my lease, and with the paid premium
03:29versions of AI or ChatGPT, which is like $20, it doesn't just make stuff up. It can cite real
03:37legal code, send you links to the resources where you can see the exact legal text that applies to
03:44you. So ultimately, this feels like an endorsement of the power of that, and I mean, I could have
03:52gone in there, and it could have been completely wrong, and I could have been embarrassed, but it
03:57had real power, and it got me the justice that I thought was deserved. Of course, it's not a
04:03substitute for legal representation, but it's a powerful tool to help people get started and
04:09navigate complex systems with more confidence. I just hope that my story inspires others to
04:15explore how technology like this can help them fight for justice.