AI and commissaires de justice: preparing reports and writs with ChatGPT without exposing the parties

What can ChatGPT do for a commissaire de justice?

Whether you still say “huissier” or already “commissaire de justice”, AI (ChatGPT, Claude or Le Chat) can save the office time on four tasks, working from a pseudonymized copy:

• Debt collection reminders: an amicable letter suited to the stage of the file, or confirmation of an agreed payment schedule.
• Replying to a debtor who disputes a statement of account: going through each item and explaining it in plain language. The code of ethics requires giving debtors “the explanations needed to clarify their situation” (article 28, our translation).
• Formatting report notes: notes taken on site, put back into ordered paragraphs, room by room.
• Explanations to a requesting party: where the procedure stands, what deadlines to expect, what a report establishes and what it doesn't.

The labels are enough for the AI: it understands that [PERSONNE_1] is claiming a sum from [PERSONNE_2] without knowing their names.

What does the CNCJ say about artificial intelligence?

The Chambre nationale des commissaires de justice (CNCJ) has made AI a project for the profession: in its press release of December 24, 2025, following its 4th national congress, it lists among its priorities “the evolution of business software and preparing supervised uses of artificial intelligence” (our translation). As of October 14, 2026, we have found no public CNCJ guide or recommendation specific to generative AI.

Until the profession sets a framework, the rule follows from the code of ethics: secrecy covers everything the office learns, and tools must guarantee confidentiality. In practice, no report, writ or debt collection file goes to an online AI without being anonymized on the computer and then reviewed. An internal AI policy sets these rules for everyone at the office.

What should you not give the AI?

• Documents in clear: an official report, a writ, a statement of account or a debtor's letter as is, with names, addresses and amounts.
• Report photos: a face, a license plate or the inside of a home often appear in them (see below).
• The calculation: interest, costs and the allocation of installments are checked in your practice software, not in a conversation.
• The findings: the AI formats what you saw, it doesn't add anything. A commissaire de justice's findings are “purely factual, excluding any opinion on the factual or legal consequences” and, except in criminal matters, are authoritative until proven otherwise (article 1 of the ordinance of June 2, 2016, our translation).

Can a commissaire de justice use ChatGPT without breaching secrecy?

Professional secrecy, tools included

The code of ethics of commissaires de justice (decree no. 2023-1296 of December 28, 2023) is clear, in its article 5: “The commissaire de justice is bound by professional secrecy, save for the exceptions provided by law” (our translation). This secrecy “covers everything that came to their knowledge in the course of their duties”: a debtor's identity, the condition of a home, what an occupant said. The commissaire de justice ensures that all staff comply with it. The French Criminal Code (Code pénal) punishes the disclosure of secret information “by one year's imprisonment and a fine of 15,000 euros” (article 226-13).

The same article addresses tools: in compliance with the GDPR, the commissaire de justice “ensures that the means of communication they use guarantee the confidentiality of exchanges and are secure”. The text doesn't mention AI, but the logic is the same: an online assistant is a service run by a third party, and what you paste into it leaves the office.

In debt collection, even the creditor doesn't learn everything

The duty to report to the client doesn't release the officer from secrecy (article 5, II). In debt collection, only information on the debtor's solvency, the installments paid or commitments offered, and the steps or acts carried out in the creditor's interest may be passed on to the creditor. If the creditor has no access to the rest, an AI service has no reason to receive it. So proofread any report to the creditor prepared with AI: it must stick to that list.

GDPR: only send what is necessary

Article 5 of the GDPR requires data to be “adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed”. To rephrase a reminder, the AI doesn't need the debtor's real name. Replacing names with labels while keeping the mapping table at the office is pseudonymization (article 4): see the difference between anonymization and pseudonymization under the GDPR.

Huissiers and commissaires-priseurs: a single profession

Since July 1, 2022, huissiers de justice and commissaires-priseurs judiciaires have been “merged into the profession of commissaire de justice” (article 25 of ordinance no. 2016-728 of June 2, 2016, our translation). The transitional period ended on July 1, 2026: since then, practitioners who don't meet the conditions of the specific training stop practicing. The question “ChatGPT and huissier” therefore falls under the code of ethics of commissaires de justice.

What to mask in a report or a writ before AI?

The GDPR considers a person identifiable if they can be identified “directly or indirectly” (article 4): in an official report, a detail that locates the premises is sometimes enough. Here is what to remove from a report, a writ or a statement of account, and what AnonymFiles finds on its own.

No automatic detection is perfect, hence the review of each document. The same person keeps the same label throughout the file, and a label can be renamed, for example [PERSONNE_DEBITEUR].

An apartment number, a license plate or a shop sign locates the premises; together with the date and time of the report, they can be enough to recognize the matter. At each review, ask yourself whether a neighbor or the landlord would recognize the file. For decisions to be enforced, see how to anonymize a court decision.

Report photos and scanned documents: a separate case

A report file often contains photos, screenshots or scanned letters. AnonymFiles reads scans and images by local OCR: the recognized text is detected as in a PDF, and the pixels of detected areas are erased in the image. A face, a license plate or the inside of a home are not detected data: mask them during review, or leave these photos out of the file. Photos inserted in a Word report are removed from the copy.

First ask yourself whether the AI needs them: formatting notes doesn't require the photos. The original stays intact, since the code of ethics requires ensuring “the preservation of evidence” during reports (article 3, our translation). If an image has to be shown, mask faces, plates and numbers on a copy, then check the result with our guide to masking an area on a scan or a photo of a document.

The method, step by step

Here is the method with AnonymFiles, a desktop app coming soon for Apple silicon Macs and Windows. For a single document, the same steps can be done by hand: see how to anonymize a document before ChatGPT.

1. Gather the file. Official report, writs, statement of account and letters as Word (.docx) or text or scanned PDF (50 MB at most); your notes as .txt or .md. The originals are never modified.
2. Run detection. Names of people, organizations, addresses, emails, French-format phone numbers, IBANs from nine European countries, private dates and ID numbers become stable labels such as [PERSONNE_1] or [ADRESSE_1].
3. Review side by side. Each original is shown next to its copy. One click masks what detection missed, an amount or an apartment number: the amount becomes, for example, [CONFIDENTIEL_1], and a selected passage applies to the whole file. You approve document by document; nothing is exported without approval.
4. Export. The export creates a new folder, where masked content is truly removed, not hidden under a black box that leaves the text readable. Metadata, annotations, forms and links are removed, file names become neutral and an index lists the exported and excluded documents. A Word file gives a .docx redacted in place, layout preserved, plus a text copy (Markdown) for the AI: body, headers, footers and notes are processed; comments, tracked changes, hidden text, images, macros and properties are removed, never copied over.
5. Work with the AI. The “Copier la consigne IA” (copy the AI instruction) button gives the instructions to paste at the start of the conversation: keep the labels, recall the [DOSSIER_…] reference. Then attach the copy and make your request.
6. Put the names back and proofread. “Réinjecter un résultat” (re-inject a result) puts the real names back into the AI's answer, pasted or as a .txt, .md, .docx or .pdf file, on the computer, with a preview before saving. The mapping table never leaves the computer.

The app works with no account, no telemetry and no online license check. On Mac, the detection models are included: no connection at all. On Windows, they are downloaded once, on first use, without any document text. See what the app does and doesn't do on the network.

Pricing: €290 excl. VAT per seat per year for one or two seats, €240 excl. VAT per seat per year from three seats; above twenty seats, on quote. See the detailed walkthrough for a commissaire de justice's office, with a fictitious report before and after, and the document anonymization software for commissaires de justice page.

Three prompts on a pseudonymized copy

These prompts assume a copy that has been prepared and reviewed, with the AnonymFiles instruction pasted at the start of the conversation.

Amicable debt collection reminder

Reply to a debtor who disputes the statement of account

Formatting report notes

Review each answer as you would a colleague's work: every sentence of a report must match what you saw, every figure of a statement must come from your software.