Student slapped with a £60 parking fine uses ChatGPT to write an appeal letter - and gets the penalty REVOKED

  • Millie Houlton, 22, was given a parking fine, despite having a parking permit
  • She used ChatGPT to write an appeal letter and had the penalty revoked
  • It comes after a Gatwick Airport motorist reduced a hefty fine using ChatGPT
  • ***Have YOU used ChatGPT to help you with everyday tasks? Email shivali.best@mailonline.co.uk*** 

By Shivali Best For Mailonline

Published: | Updated:

A student used the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT to revoke a parking fine that was issued even though she had a permit. 

Millie Houlton, 22, from York, used the bot to write an email to the council, which then revoked the £60 fine.

Believing she wouldn't be able to get her point across herself, business management student Millie used the AI chatbot to create a professionally worded email to appeal against the fine.

When she asked ChatGPT to help her write a letter to the council, the AI came back with a polite response for Millie to send.

After successfully getting the fine revoked, in true student style Millie used her £60 and went on a night out to celebrate.

Millie Houlton, 22, from York, used the bot to write an email to the council, which then revoked the £60 fine for parking on a yellow line

Millie Houlton, 22, from York, used the bot to write an email to the council, which then revoked the £60 fine for parking on a yellow line

Miss Houlton said the fine was wrongly issued for parking on her street because she had a permit to leave her car there

Miss Houlton said the fine was wrongly issued for parking on her street because she had a permit to leave her car there

Gatwick Airport motorist reduced hefty fine using ChatGPT - READ MORE

A letter composed by ChatGPT for motorist  Shaun Bosley, who was appealing against a fine at Gatwick Airport. He said: 'In the end I just typed, "Write an appeal to a penalty charge notice for driving through Gatwick Airport. I have received final notice, but never received first notice of the penalty".'

A letter composed by ChatGPT for motorist  Shaun Bosley, who was appealing against a fine at Gatwick Airport. He said: 'In the end I just typed, "Write an appeal to a penalty charge notice for driving through Gatwick Airport. I have received final notice, but never received first notice of the penalty".'

 

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She explained: 'I believe I wouldn't have been able to word it the way ChatGPT did. Without it I probably wouldn't have had it taken it back.

'I was relieved as I'm a student. I don't want to spend £60 if I can avoid it. I was so pleased I could find a tool that can assist in putting thoughts into words in a professional manner.

'I came across ChatGPT mainly for work as I make content creation for businesses and I realised I could use it for other aspects of my life too. 

'I use it for photo captions and emails as well as everything else now.

'I feel like the parking ticket was given to me wrongfully and I'm not good at putting points across on paper, so I used ChatGPT and it worked to appeal it.

'My friends have already started using it now to help them write letters, too. 

'It's just a matter of knowing your problem, telling ChatGPT and then it just puts it all into words in a professional way.

'If you can use it in the right way it's really good, although I have heard some horror stories.

'I think if you know how to use it, it can give some good answers. 

'Everyone is talking about ChatGPT at the moment but I don't think people would know to use it in this sense and revoke a parking fine.'

Posting a video on TikTok of her ordeal, Millie has had lots of people asking her what ChatGPT is and how to use it.

She added: 'I don't think a lot of people know it's a thing or how to utilise it properly, so now I make videos on how to use it as a student.

Millie believed she wouldn't be able to get her point across herself
The business management student used the AI chatbot to create a professionally worded email to appeal against the fine

Believing she wouldn't be able to get her point across herself, business management student Millie used the AI chatbot to create a professionally worded email to appeal against the fine.

How to use ChatGPT 

  1. Go to https://chat.openai.com/ and sign up for free 
  2. Scroll down until you see ChatGTP on the bottom left corner of the page
  3. Click on it to start chatting
  4. Make sure your prompts are clear and avoid using long sentences. Ask specific questions and explain the context.
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'I really didn't expect the response I got on my TikTok. A lot of people have now seen it and are asking me what it is.

'So many people have said it's a good idea and have loved my video.'

The news comes shortly after a motorist who received a fine after driving through Gatwick Airport's drop-off area challenged it using ChatGPT and had their penalty reduced.

Shaun Bosley, from Brighton, East Sussex, was dropping a work colleague at the airport last November and received a £100 'final notice' from NCP several months later, despite saying he had received no previous correspondence.

Mr Bosley, a sales consultant for Phyron, a Swedish company which produces videos for car dealerships using AI, turned to ChatGPT.

He explained how he used the chatbot to write an appeal against the fine, adding that it 'came back with a great response'.

Mr Bosley said: 'In the end, I just typed, "Write an appeal to a penalty charge notice for driving through Gatwick Airport. I have received final notice, but never received first notice of the penalty".

'Straight away it came back with a great response,' he told the PA news agency.

It comes as Google is hoping to usher a new era of searching for information on the internet with its new AI chatbot, Bard. 

The tech giant has rush-released Bard just months after the release of its hugely successful rival ChatGPT created by California AI firm OpenAI, backed by Microsoft.

Elon Musk's hatred of AI explained: Billionaire believes it will spell the end of humans - a fear Stephen Hawking shared

Elon Musk wants to push technology to its absolute limit, from space travel to self-driving cars — but he draws the line at artificial intelligence. 

The billionaire first shared his distaste for AI in 2014, calling it humanity's 'biggest existential threat' and comparing it to 'summoning the demon.'

At the time, Musk also revealed he was investing in AI companies not to make money but to keep an eye on the technology in case it gets out of hand. 

His main fear is that in the wrong hands, if AI becomes advanced, it could overtake humans and spell the end of mankind, which is known as The Singularity.

That concern is shared among many brilliant minds, including the late Stephen Hawking, who told the BBC in 2014: 'The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.

'It would take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate.' 

Despite his fear of AI, Musk has invested in the San Francisco-based AI group Vicarious, in DeepMind, which has since been acquired by Google, and OpenAI, creating the popular ChatGPT program that has taken the world by storm in recent months.

During a 2016 interview, Musk noted that he and OpenAI created the company to 'have democratisation of AI technology to make it widely available.'

Musk founded OpenAI with Sam Altman, the company's CEO, but in 2018 the billionaire attempted to take control of the start-up.

His request was rejected, forcing him to quit OpenAI and move on with his other projects.

In November, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, which became an instant success worldwide.

The chatbot uses 'large language model' software to train itself by scouring a massive amount of text data so it can learn to generate eerily human-like text in response to a given prompt. 

ChatGPT is used to write research papers, books, news articles, emails and more.

But while Altman is basking in its glory, Musk is attacking ChatGPT.

He says the AI is 'woke' and deviates from OpenAI's original non-profit mission.

'OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it 'Open' AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft, Musk tweeted in February.

The Singularity is making waves worldwide as artificial intelligence advances in ways only seen in science fiction - but what does it actually mean?

In simple terms, it describes a hypothetical future where technology surpasses human intelligence and changes the path of our evolution.

Experts have said that once AI reaches this point, it will be able to innovate much faster than humans. 

There are two ways the advancement could play out, with the first leading to humans and machines working together to create a world better suited for humanity.

For example, humans could scan their consciousness and store it in a computer in which they will live forever.

The second scenario is that AI becomes more powerful than humans, taking control and making humans its slaves - but if this is true, it is far off in the distant future.

Researchers are now looking for signs of AI  reaching The Singularity, such as the technology's ability to translate speech with the accuracy of a human and perform tasks faster.

Former Google engineer Ray Kurzweil predicts it will be reached by 2045.

He has made 147 predictions about technology advancements since the early 1990s - and 86 per cent have been correct. 

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