A college student asked ChatGPT to write a letter to get out of a parking ticket – and it worked

A college student from the U.K. says she asked ChatGPT, artificial intelligence technology, to write a letter to get out of a parking ticket – and it worked. 

Millie Houlton, a student a York St. John University, had a £60 parking fine, about $74 U.S. dollars, that she said was wrongly issued. She was going to just pay up – but decided to dispute the fine by asking ChatGPT what to say, she told BBC News.

"I was like, 'Oh I don't need this fine, I'm a student,' but trying to articulate what I wanted to say was pretty difficult so I thought I'll just see if ChatGPT can do it for me," she told BBC News. 

She told ChatGPT the details – that the fine was for parking on her own street, which she has a permit for – and it computed a response. "It said I was a student and that I had paid for my permit for two years and I wasn't going to deliberately park somewhere I shouldn't," she said.

A screenshot of the bot's response was obtained by AFP. It shows the crafted letter, with just a few areas left for Houlton to fill in, like the date of the parking ticket and the name of the road she parked on. 

She submitted the finished letter and received a response that the fine was revoked. She told BBC News she was "very relieved" it worked. CBS News reached out to Houlton via Facebook and is awaiting response. 

Houlton is just one of the estimated 100 million users on ChatGPT. The AI technology, which became the fastest-growing app ever, according to a USB study, is used to answer questions and complete tasks. 

It is so accurate, it could even replace humans in certain jobs and tasks – like writing code for computer programmers or crafting letters for human resource representatives. It is also used to write essays, and when ChatGPT was tasked with taking the bar exam – it passed. 

In:
• ChatGPT

Caitlin O'Kane

Caitlin O'Kane is a digital content producer covering trending stories for CBS News and its good news brand, The Uplift.