OpenAI says it has been forced to store deleted ChatGPT conversations “indefinitely” due to a court ruling in The New York Times’ copyright infringement lawsuit against it. In a post on Thursday, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap said the company is appealing the court’s decision, which he calls an “overreach” that “abandons longstanding privacy norms and weakens privacy protections.”
Last month, the court ordered OpenAI to retain “all original log data that would otherwise have been deleted,” even if a user requests that the chat be deleted or if privacy laws require OpenAI to delete the data. OpenAI’s policy is that when a user deletes a chat, it retains it for 30 days before permanently deleting it. The company must now suspend this policy until the court rules otherwise.
OpenAI states that the court’s decision will affect users of Free, Pro, Plus, and Team ChatGPT. It will not affect ChatGPT Enterprise or ChatGPT Edu customers, nor will it affect companies that have entered into a zero data retention agreement. OpenAI adds that the data will not be public, and “only a small, vetted OpenAI legal and security team” will be able to access the stored information for legitimate purposes.
In 2023, The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, accusing the companies of “copying and using millions” of the newspaper’s articles to train their AI models. The newspaper claims that preserving user data can help preserve evidence to support its position.
“We believe this was an inappropriate request that sets a bad precedent,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X. “We will fight any request that jeopardizes our users’ privacy; that is our core principle. The New York Times declined to comment.
