OpenAI Ordered to Retain ChatGPT Data Indefinitely Amid Privacy Concerns

OpenAI has appealed a court ruling from last month that mandates it to retain ChatGPT data indefinitely as part of a copyright violation case initiated by The New York Times in 2023. CEO Sam Altman expressed his concerns in a tweet on X, stating that the judge’s decision “compromises our users’ privacy” and “sets a bad precedent.” 

Details of the Court Order

In May, federal judge Ona T. Wang ordered OpenAI to preserve and segregate all ChatGPT output log data that would otherwise be deleted due to user requests. The judge justified the ruling by noting that the volume of deleted conversations is “significant.” Furthermore, the directive indicated that the judge inquired whether there was a method to anonymize the data to alleviate users’ privacy concerns. 

Background of the Case

The New York Times sought the order to accurately monitor how often OpenAI violates its intellectual property rights, particularly in instances where users requested the deletion of chats. A federal judge permitted the original case to proceed, agreeing with the NYT‘s argument that OpenAI and Microsoft‘s technology had encouraged users to plagiarize its materials. 

OpenAI’s Response

In a FAQ on its website, OpenAI characterized the order as a privacy issue, without addressing the millions of alleged copyright violations. The company stated, “This fundamentally conflicts with the privacy commitments we have made to our users. It abandons long-standing privacy norms and weakens privacy protections.” OpenAI also clarified that the order “does not impact ChatGPT Enterprise or ChatGPT Edu customers.”

Ongoing Legal Challenges

The NYT and other AI copyright cases are still in progress, as courts have yet to determine whether OpenAI, Google, and other companies have infringed copyrights on a large scale by scraping material from the internet. Tech companies argue that training AI models falls under the protection of “fair use” copyright law, asserting that the lawsuits pose a threat to the AI industry. Conversely, content creators argue that AI technologies undermine their livelihoods by appropriating and reproducing their works with minimal or no compensation. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-appeals-court-order-forcing-it-to-preserve-all-chatgpt-data-120032364.html?src=rss