Yes, you can use an AI chatbot such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini to help you write your will. It can ask you sensible questions, organise your wishes and produce a tidy first draft in minutes. But a chatbot does not know whether its draft would work in England and Wales. It can invent things. It will not check that you have capacity, it will not follow up, and nobody stands behind it if it gets things wrong.
This guide gives you a simple prompt to get started. Then it explains the risks, with real examples of what has gone wrong when professionals trusted AI.
Can I use AI to write my will, and is it legal?
Yes. Nothing in the law stops you. Writing a will is not a "reserved legal activity" under section 12 of the Legal Services Act 2007, so anyone can draft one, including you with the help of a chatbot.
A will drafted with AI can be valid in England and Wales. It must be signed and witnessed correctly under section 9 of the Wills Act 1837, and you must have the mental capacity to make it when you sign. Who drafted it does not matter. A chatbot can help with the words. It cannot do those parts for you.
How many people would use AI to make a will?
More than you might think. A Censuswide survey for The Association of Lifetime Lawyers found that "72% of UK adults aged between 30 and 34 would consider using AI to update their will". The research was published in February 2025.
The lawyers behind the survey were worried. Kirsty Limacher, a legal consultant at the Association, warned that "AI simply cannot understand the complexities of human relationships". The rest of this guide explains why that matters, and how to use AI more safely if you do.
How do I make my will with AI? Step by step
- Start with the prompt below. Copy it into the chatbot of your choice.
- Answer its questions. Give names and relationships, but keep account numbers and other private details out of it.
- Read the draft carefully. Check every name, every gift, and who receives what is left over (your "residuary estate").
- Get it checked. Have the draft reviewed against the law of England and Wales by a solicitor or a solicitor-checked service.
- Sign it properly. Print it and sign it in front of two witnesses who are there at the same time. Neither witness should be someone who inherits.
- Store it safely and keep it up to date. Tell your executors where it is, and review it after big life changes such as marriage.
A simple prompt to get started
If you want to try it, copy this into the chatbot of your choice:
"I live in England and want to make a simple will under the law of England and Wales. Ask me questions one at a time about my family, what I own, who I want to inherit, who should be my executors, and who should look after any children under 18. Then write a plain-English draft. After the draft, list every point I should check with a solicitor before I sign it."
Two tips before you start:
- Keep private details out of it. You do not need to type in account numbers or exact balances to get a useful draft. Guidance written for judges warns that "any information that you input into a public AI chatbot should be seen as being published to all the world".
- Treat the result as notes, not a will. Use it to work out what you want. Then have it checked.
What are the risks of making a will with AI?
Does AI know the law of England and Wales?
A chatbot learns from huge amounts of text, most of it from the internet. The judiciary's own guidance on AI says this:
"The currently available LLMs appear to have been trained on material published on the internet. Their 'view' of the law is often based heavily on US and historic law, although some do purport to be able to distinguish between that and the law of England and Wales."
Will law is different in different countries, and it changes. Here is one example of "historic law". From 28 September 2020 to 31 January 2024, a will in England and Wales could be witnessed over a video call. That temporary rule has now ended, and witnesses must be physically present again. A chatbot that learned from older material may not know that.
Why does it matter that AI learned from fiction?
AI models are trained on books as well as web pages, and many of those books are novels. One widely used training collection, The Pile, includes a set of books that "consists of a mix of fiction and nonfiction". Its creators say they included it partly for "coherent storytelling". The same collection includes film and TV subtitles. In a 2025 US court case about Anthropic, the company behind Claude, the court heard that it had "purchased millions of books, scanned and digitized them" to train its models.
Wills appear in a great many stories. They are written for drama, not to be valid. A chatbot has no reliable way of telling you which parts of what it learned came from a law book and which came from a thriller.
Can AI make up legal information?
AI tools sometimes produce confident answers that are simply wrong. This is called "hallucination". The High Court put it bluntly in 2025:
"Such tools can produce apparently coherent and plausible responses to prompts, but those coherent and plausible responses may turn out to be entirely incorrect. The responses may make confident assertions that are simply untrue. They may cite sources that do not exist."
Lawyers are trained to spot mistakes, and many have still been caught out:
| Case | What happened |
|---|---|
| Ayinde v London Borough of Haringey (2025) | A barrister put five cases before the court that did not exist. She and the law centre were each ordered to pay £2,000 in wasted costs, and she was referred to her regulator. |
| Al-Haroun v Qatar National Bank (2025) | Material put before the court by a client and his solicitor relied on 45 citations. In 18 of them, the case did not exist. The solicitor was referred to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. |
| Rodney v Gee'z Micro Bar & Pitstop (2026) | Two solicitors were referred to the Solicitors Regulation Authority after documents with false authorities were filed for a client's appeal. The judge called it "inexcusable". |
| Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (2026) | A registered foreign lawyer was struck off for putting AI-generated fake authorities before the tribunal, then sending more false material after the errors were pointed out. |
| Mata v Avianca (US, 2023) | Lawyers in New York relied on fake cases produced by ChatGPT. The judge imposed a sanction of $5,000 on each of two lawyers and on their law firm. |
It is not only lawyers. In Harber v HMRC (2023), a member of the public relied on nine tribunal decisions to support her tax appeal. None of them were genuine. When the tribunal asked whether they came from an AI system such as ChatGPT, she said this was "possible".
The solicitors' regulator now warns that "Reliance on an output of AI would not be a suitable defence". It received 42 reports of possible AI misuse in the year to July 2026. If trained professionals get caught out, a mistake in a home-made will is easy to miss. And it may only come to light after your death, when you cannot fix it.
Will AI follow up or give me advice?
A chatbot answers the questions you ask. It does not know what you have not told it, and it will not get in touch later.
That matters because your life changes. For example, under section 18 of the Wills Act 1837, "a will shall be revoked by the testator's marriage", unless the will says it was made in expectation of marrying a particular person. So a will you write today could be cancelled by a wedding next year. A good adviser asks about your plans and tells you when to update your will. A chatbot only does that if you think to ask.
Will an AI check my mental capacity?
To make a valid will, you need "testamentary capacity". The test still comes from Banks v Goodfellow (1870), and the Court of Appeal confirmed in Hughes v Pritchard (2022) that it applies. Among other things, you must:
- Understand what a will does. You must "understand the nature of the act and its effects".
- Understand what you own. You must "understand the extent of the property of which [you are] disposing".
- Think about who has a claim on you. You must "be able to comprehend and appreciate the claims to which [you] ought to give effect".
A chatbot cannot see you, cannot judge whether you understand what you are doing, and keeps no independent record of it. Where someone is elderly or unwell, good practice (the "golden rule") is to have their capacity assessed and recorded when the will is made. The Court of Appeal describes this as "a rule of solicitors' good practice, not a rule of law", but without that evidence there is little to answer a challenge later. Our guide to testamentary capacity explains the test in more detail.
Who is liable if an AI-written will goes wrong?
If a solicitor makes a negligent mistake in a will, the people who should have inherited can sue them. The House of Lords decided this in White v Jones (1995). Lord Goff said the solicitor's responsibility "should be held in law to extend to the intended beneficiary" who loses their inheritance through the solicitor's negligence.
AI companies take a very different position. Anthropic's consumer terms say users "should not rely on any Outputs or Actions without independently confirming their accuracy". They cap its total liability at the greater of what you paid in the previous six months or £100. Other providers' terms vary, so read them before you rely on anything a chatbot writes.
Because anyone can write wills, it is always worth asking any will writer whether they carry insurance.
Can AI sign or witness my will?
However good the draft, the will only counts if it is signed properly. Under section 9 of the Wills Act 1837, you must sign it, or acknowledge your signature, in front of two witnesses who are present at the same time. Each witness must then sign it in your presence.
Choose those witnesses carefully. Under section 15, a gift in the will to a witness, or to a witness's husband or wife, is "utterly null and void". Our guides on how to sign a will and who can witness a will cover this step by step.
So should I use AI to make my will?
Use it to think. A chatbot is a good way to work out what you want, list what you own and prepare questions. Do not let it be the last word. Get the draft checked against the law of England and Wales by someone who is accountable for it.
That is what our solicitor-checked online will does. You answer simple questions online, a solicitor checks your will, and we explain how to sign it correctly. Make a Will is a trading name of Capacity Vault Ltd, which holds professional indemnity insurance of £2m. You can make your will with us online.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice. If you have used AI to draft a will and want to know whether it would work, please get in touch for advice on your own situation.
Sources
- Legal Services Act 2007, section 12 (reserved legal activities) on legislation.gov.uk
- Wills Act 1837, section 9 (signing and witnessing), including the expired video-witnessing amendment, on legislation.gov.uk
- Wills Act 1837, section 15 (gifts to witnesses) on legislation.gov.uk
- Wills Act 1837, section 18 (revocation by marriage) on legislation.gov.uk
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) Guidance for Judicial Office Holders, 31 October 2025, on judiciary.uk. The quotations on training data and confidentiality are on page 4.
- Ayinde v London Borough of Haringey and Al-Haroun v Qatar National Bank [2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin) on Find Case Law, The National Archives. See paragraph 6 (the risks of AI), the summaries of both cases, paragraph 84 (Harber v HMRC [2023] UKFTT 1007 (TC)) and paragraphs 89 to 90 (Mata v Avianca).
- Hughes v Pritchard [2022] EWCA Civ 386 on Find Case Law, The National Archives, at paragraphs 62 and 85
- White v Jones [1995] UKHL 5, [1995] 2 AC 207 on BAILII, per Lord Goff of Chieveley
- Warning notice: misuse of AI, 17 August 2026, on the Solicitors Regulation Authority
- SRA cautions profession about safe and responsible use of AI in legal sector, 17 August 2026, on the Solicitors Regulation Authority
- Judge refers solicitors to SRA after false cases generated by AI submitted to court, 14 May 2026, Law Gazette
- A lawyer fed AI citations to his own regulator, and the tribunal struck him off, ComplexDiscovery, reporting Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal case 12884
- Gao and others, The Pile: An 800GB Dataset of Diverse Text for Language Modeling (2020), on arXiv, section 2.3
- Wiggin and Dana on Bartz v Anthropic, the first US court decision on fair use in training AI, 30 June 2025
- Anthropic consumer terms of service on anthropic.com
- 72% of adults in their early 30s would trust AI to update their will, experts warn, 28 February 2025, Today's Wills and Probate, reporting Censuswide research for The Association of Lifetime Lawyers
Common questions
Is a will written by ChatGPT legally valid in England and Wales?
It can be. Who drafted the will does not matter. It is valid only if you sign it, or acknowledge your signature, in front of two witnesses who are present at the same time, each witness then signs it, and you have the mental capacity to make it. Those rules come from section 9 of the Wills Act 1837 and the test in Banks v Goodfellow. A chatbot cannot do any of that for you.
Can AI witness or sign my will?
No. Your witnesses must be two people who are physically present when you sign. Video witnessing was allowed only temporarily, from 28 September 2020 to 31 January 2024, and that rule has ended. A gift to a witness, or to a witness's husband or wife, is void under section 15 of the Wills Act 1837, so choose witnesses who do not inherit.
What should I check in an AI-drafted will?
Check that it follows the law of England and Wales, not another country's. Check every name, gift and the person who receives what is left over. Check that any cases or laws it mentions actually exist, because AI tools can invent them. Then have it reviewed by a solicitor or a solicitor-checked service before you sign.
Who is responsible if an AI-written will is wrong?
Usually nobody but you. If a solicitor makes a negligent mistake in a will, the people who should have inherited can sue, under White v Jones (1995). AI companies' terms typically tell you not to rely on their output without checking it, and limit their liability. Anthropic, for example, caps its liability to consumers at the greater of what you paid in the previous six months or £100.
Oliver Asha
Solicitor · TEP · Founder of Make a Will
Oliver is a Solicitor (SRA number 372772) and a Trust and Estate Practitioner (TEP). He qualified in 2006 and he is founder at Make a Will, Make a Will Online, Digilegal Trustees and Capacity Vault. It is his mission to bring proper, solicitor-checked wills within reach of every family. He personally drafts and oversees the review of many of the guides on this site.
Verify Oliver’s credentials: Law Society · SRA register · STEP directory
Further Reading
- Making a Will - GOV.UK Official UK Government guidance on making a will
- Wills - Citizens Advice Free advice on wills and inheritance