OpenAI Fights Order To Turn Over Millions of ChatGPT Conversations (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0180057942
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/11/12/2158208/openai-fights-order-to-turn-over-millions-of-chatgpt-conversations
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/openai-fights-order-turn-over-millions-chatgpt-conversations-2025-11-12/
> OpenAI asked a federal judge in New York on Wednesday to reverse an order that [1]required it to turn over 20 million anonymized ChatGPT chat logs amid a copyright infringement lawsuit by the New York Times and other news outlets, [2]saying it would expose users' private conversations . The artificial intelligence company [3]argued that turning over the logs would disclose confidential user information and that "99.99%" of the transcripts have nothing to do with the copyright infringement allegations in the case.
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> "To be clear: anyone in the world who has used ChatGPT in the past three years must now face the possibility that their personal conversations will be handed over to The Times to sift through at will in a speculative fishing expedition," the company said in a [4]court filing (PDF). The news outlets argued that the logs were necessary to determine whether ChatGPT reproduced their copyrighted content and to rebut OpenAI's assertion that they "hacked" the chatbot's responses to manufacture evidence. The lawsuit claims OpenAI misused their articles to train ChatGPT to respond to user prompts.
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> Magistrate Judge Ona Wang said in her order to produce the chats that users' privacy would be protected by the company's "exhaustive de-identification" and other safeguards. OpenAI has a Friday deadline to produce the transcripts.
[1] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/08/05/2130255/openai-offers-20-million-user-chats-in-chatgpt-lawsuit-nyt-wants-120-million
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/openai-fights-order-turn-over-millions-chatgpt-conversations-2025-11-12/
[3] https://openai.com/index/fighting-nyt-user-privacy-invasion/
[4] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.640396/gov.uscourts.nysd.640396.742.0_1.pdf
Exhaustive? (Score:3)
How on earth can you "exhaustively" deidentify millions of chat logs that could contain literally any personal details, and presumably all without OpenAI's own employees also sifting through personal information in exactly the way they're claiming would be bad if others did it?
Re: (Score:3)
You can't. The order is fucking absurd.
It's like suing the phone company and getting them to provide transcripts of every call that ever went through their network so you can sift through them and look for infringements/crimes.
This judge is off their fucking rocker.
I deal with subpoenas regularly, professionally.
If I ever got one that asked me for all of my logs on anything, I would fight it until I had exhausted every option.
FWIW- that has never happened. They've always been tight in scope.
Re: (Score:2)
This is hardly "all of" the logs - they probably had more than 20 million chats yesterday. I'm sure they are asking for logs that have some specifics in mind, like time period and maybe even user input = OpenAI employee.
Re: (Score:2)
Allow me to clarify.
If a subpoena asked me for all of my logs in a certain time frame , I would still fight it- because that is not how subpoenas work.
A subpoena must not be overly broad, or overly burdensome. It must also be specific and pertinent.
It is normal to ask for too much, and to have it fought down to less.
In this case, the judge has granted the request for too much.
The plaintiff doesn't know what they're looking for- so they're trying to cast a dragnet to find it. It's a fucking fishing exp
Re: Exhaustive? (Score:2)
You can't and like all advertising bullshit, "anonymized" is a euphemism for fuck the end user aka the product.
What about the "clean room" approach? (Score:1)
In the clean-room approach, the other party or examiners are required to be strip-searched and to wear simple prison-like clothing as they go into a room without internet connections to examine the info in question? They can take written notes, but all notes are subject to scrutiny before being handed back.
Re: (Score:1)
> all notes are subject to scrutiny
Clarification: subject to judicial scrutiny to make sure they don't contain personal info or info irrelevant to the case.
Let's hope (Score:2)
...they find lots of conversations where people teach ChatGPT the lyrics of their favorite (copyrighted) songs. :-)