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How we’re responding to The NYT’s data demands in order to protect user privacy

284 points by BUFU 1y ago

kingkawn 1y ago
Once the data is kept it is a matter of time til a new must-try use for it will be born
DanAtC 1y ago
[flagged]
supriyo-biswas 1y ago
I wonder whether OpenAI legal can make the case for storing fuzzy hashes of the content, in the form of ssdeep[1] hashes or content-defined chunks[2] of said data, instead of the actual conversations themselves. After all, since the NYT has a very limited corpus of information, and supposedly people are generating infringing content using their APIs, said hashes can be used to compare whether such content has been generated. I'd rather have them store nothing, but given the overly broad court order I think this may be the best middle ground. Of course, I haven't read the lawsuit documents and don't know if NYT is requesting far more, or alleging some indirect form of infringement which would invalidate my proposal. [1] https://ssdeep-project.github.io/ssdeep/index.html https://ssdeep-project.github.io/ssdeep/index.html [2] https://joshleeb.com/posts/content-defined-chunking.html https://joshleeb.com/posts/content-defined-chunking.html
- paxys 1y ago
  Yeah, try explaining any of these words to a lawyer or judge.
  - landl0rd 1y ago
    "You are a long-suffering clerk speaking to a judge who's sat the same federal bench for two decades and who believes 'everything is computer' constitutes a deep technical insight."
  - m463 1y ago
    "you are a helpful law assistant."
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    I thought that's what GPT was for.
  - sthatipamala 1y ago
    The judges in these technical cases can be quite sophisticated and absolutely do learn terms of art. See Oracle v. Google (Java API case)
    - anshumankmr 1y ago
      As I looked up the judge for this one(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Alsup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Alsup) who was a hobbyist basic programmer, one would need a judge who coded MNIST as a passtime hobby if that is the case.
      - king_magic 1y ago
        a smart judge who is minimally tech savvy could learn to train a model to predict MNIST in a day or two
- bigyabai 1y ago
  All of that does fit on a real spiffy whitepaper. Let's not fool around though, every ChatGPT session is sent directly into an S3 bucket that some three-letter spook backs up onto their tapes every month. It's a database of candid, timestamped text interactions from a bunch of rubes that logged in with their Google account - you couldn't ask for a juicer target unless you reinvented email. Of course it's backdoored, you can't even begin to try proving me wrong. Maybe I'm alone, but a pinkie-promise from Sam Altman does not confer any assurances about my data to me. It's about equally as reassuring as a singing telegram from Mark Zuckerberg dancing to a song about how secure WhatsApp is.
  - 7speter 1y ago
    Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe this was discussed previously, but of course openai keeps our data, they use it for training!
    - nl 1y ago
      As the linked page points out you can turn this off in settings if you are an end user or choose zero retention if you are an API user.
      - justacrow 1y ago
        I mean, they already stole and used all copyrighted material they could find to train the thing, am I supposed to believe that thry wont use my data just because I tick a checkbox?
        stock_toaster 1y ago
        Agreed, I have hard time believing anything the eye scanning crypto coin (worldcoin or whatever) guy says at this point.
      - Jackpillar 1y ago
        I wish I could test drive your brain to experience a world where one believes that would stop them from stealing your data.
- LandoCalrissian 1y ago
  Trying to actively circumvent the intention of a judges order is a pretty bad idea.
  - girvo 1y ago
    Deeply, deeply so. In fact so much so that people who suggest them show they've (luckily) not had to interact with the legal system much. Judges take an incredibly dim view of that kind of thing haha
  - Aeolun 1y ago
    That’s not circumvention though. The intent of the order is to be able to prove that ChatGPT regurgitates NYT content, not to read the personal communications of all ChatGPT users.
- delusional 1y ago
  I haven't been able to find any of the supporting documents, but the court order makes it seem like OpenAI has been unhelpful in producing any alternative during the conversation. For example, the judge seems to have asked if it would be possible to segregate data that the users wanted deleted from other data, but OpenAI has failed to answer. Not just denied the request, but simply ignored it. I think it's quite likely that OpenAI has taken the PR route instead of seriously engaging with any way to constructively honor the request for retention of data.
vanattab 1y ago
Protect our privacy? Or protect thier right to piracy?
- NBJack 1y ago
  Agreed. I don't buy the spin.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- charrondev 1y ago
  I mean the court is ordering them to retain user conversations at least until resolution of the court case (in case there is copyrighted responses being generated?). So user privacy is definitely implicated.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
amluto 1y ago
It appears that the “Zero Data Retention” APIs they mention are something that customers need to request access to, and that it’s really quite hard to get this access. I’d be more impressed if any API user could use those APIs.
- singron 1y ago
  If OpenAI cared about our privacy, ZDR would be a setting anyone could turn on.
- JimDabell 1y ago
  I believe Apple’s agreement includes this, at least when a user isn’t signed into an OpenAI account: > OpenAI must process your request solely for the purpose of fulfilling it and not store your request or any responses it provides unless required under applicable laws. OpenAI also must not use your request to improve or train its models. — https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/chatgpt-extension/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/chatgpt-extensio... I wonder if we’ll end up seeing Apple dragged into this lawsuit. I’m sure after telling their users it’s private, they won’t be happy about everything getting logged, even if they do have that caveat in there about complying with laws.
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    > I’m sure after telling their users it’s private, they won’t be happy about everything getting logged, The ZDR APIs are not and will not be logged. The linked page is clear about that.
FireBeyond 1y ago
Sure, OpenAI, I will absolutely trust you. > The content covered by the court order is stored separately in a secure system. It’s protected under legal hold, meaning it can’t be accessed or used for purposes other than meeting legal obligations. That's horse shit and OpenAI knows it. It means no such thing. A legal hold is just a 'preservation order'. It says absolutely nothing about other access or use.
- fragmede 1y ago
  why is it horse shit that OpenAI is saying they've put the files in a cabinet that only legal has access to?
  - FireBeyond 1y ago
    They are saying a “legal hold” means that they have to keep the data but don’t worry they’re not allowed to use it or access it for any other reason. A legal hold requires no such thing and there would be no such requirement in it. They are perfectly free to access and use it for any reason.
- mmooss 1y ago
  OpenAI's other policies, and other laws and regulations, do have such requirements. Are they nullified because the data is held under a court order?
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    "The judge and court need to view this information to actually pass justice and decide the case" almost always supersedes other laws. The GDPR does not say that you can never be proven to have done something wrong in a court of law.
    - mmooss 1y ago
      Right. The GGP says the information could be used for other purposes.
tomhow 1y ago
Related discussion: OpenAI slams court order to save all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44185913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44185913 - June 2025 (878 comments)
dangus 1y ago
I think the court order doesn’t quite go against as many norms as OpenAI is claiming. It’s very reasonable to retain data pertinent to a case, and NYT’s case almost certainly revolves around finding out copyright infringement damages, which are calculated based on the number of violations (how many users queried ChatGPT and were returned verbatim copyrighted material from NYT). If you don’t retain that data you’re destroying evidence for the case. It’s not like the data is going to be given to anyone, it’s only gong to be used for limited legal purposes for the lawsuit (as OpenAI confirms in this article). And honestly, OpenAI should have just not used copyrighted data illegally and they would have never had this problem. I saw NYT’s filing and it had very compelling evidence that you could get ChatGPT to distribute verbatim copyrighted text from the Times without citation.
- tptacek 1y ago
  And honestly, OpenAI should have just not used copyrighted data illegally and they would have never had this problem The whole premise of the lawsuit is that they didn't do anything unlawful, so saying "just do what the NYT wanted you to do" isn't interesting.
  - dangus 1y ago
    No, you're misinterpreting how information discovery and the court system works. The NYT made an argument to a judge about what they think is going on and how they think the copyright infringement is taking place and harming them. In their filings and hearings they present the reasoning and evidence they have that leads them to believe that a violation is occurring. The court makes a judgment on whether or not to order OpenAI to preserve and disclose information relevant to the case to the court. It's not "just do what NYT wanted you to do," it's "do what the court orders you to do based on a lawsuit brought by a plaintiff and argued to the court." I suggest you read the court filing: https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/2023/12/NYT_Complaint_Dec2023.pdf https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/2023/12/NYT_Complaint_Dec20...
- lxgr 1y ago
  It absolutely goes against norms in many countries other than the US, and the data of residents/citizens of these countries are affected too. > It’s not like the data is going to be given to anyone, it’s only gong to be used for limited legal purposes for the lawsuit (as OpenAI confirms in this article). Nobody other than both parties to the case, their lawyers, the court, and whatever case file storage system they use. In my view, that's already way too much given the amount and value of this data.
_jab 1y ago
> How will you store my data and who can access it? > The content covered by the court order is stored separately in a secure system. It’s protected under legal hold, meaning it can’t be accessed or used for purposes other than meeting legal obligations. > Only a small, audited OpenAI legal and security team would be able to access this data as necessary to comply with our legal obligations. So, by OpenAI's own admission, they are taking abundant and presumably effective steps to protect user privacy here? In the unlikely event that this data did somehow leak, I'd personally be blaming OpenAI, not the NYT. Some of the other language in this post, like repeatedly calling the lawsuit "baseless", really makes this just read like an unconvincing attempt at a spin piece. Nothing to see here.
- sashank_1509 1y ago
  Obviously openAI’s point of view will be their point of view. They are going to call this lawsuit baseless, they would not be fighting it or else.
  - ivape 1y ago
    To me it's pretty clear the way this will happen. You will need to buy additional credits or subscriptions through these LLMs that feedback payment to things like NYT and book publishers. It's all stolen. I don't even want to hear it. This company doesn't want to pay up and willing to let user's privacy hang in the balance to draw the case out until they get sure footing with their device launches or the like (or additional markets like enterprise, etc).
    - fallingknife 1y ago
      Copyright is pretty narrowly tailored to verbatim reproduction of content so I doubt they will have to pay anything.
      - tiahura 1y ago
        incorrect. copyright applies to derived works.
sega_sai 1y ago
Strange smear against NYT. If NYT has a case, and the court approves that, it's bizarre to to use the court order to smear NYT. If there is no case, "Open"AI will have a chance to prove its case in court.
- tptacek 1y ago
  They're a party to the case! Saying it's baseless isn't a "smear". There is literally nothing else they can say (other than something synonymous with "baseless", like "without merit").
  - lucianbr 1y ago
    Oh they definitely can say other things. It's just that it would be inconvenient. They might lose money. I wonder if the laws and legal procedures are written considering this general assumption that a party to a lawsuit will naturally lie if it is in their interest. And then I read articles and comments about a "trust based society"...
    - tptacek 1y ago
      I'm not taking one side or the other in the case itself, but it's lazy and superficial to suggest that the defendant in a civil suit would say anything other than that the suit has no merit. The version of this statement where they generously interpret anything the NYT (I subscribe) says, they might as well just surrender. I'm not sticking up for OpenAI so much as just for decent, interesting threads here.
    - wilg 1y ago
      > They might lose money. I expect it's more about them losing the _case_. Silly to expect someone fighting a lawsuit not to try to win it.
    - fastball 1y ago
      This is the nature of the civil court system – it exists for when parties disagree. Why would a defendant who agrees a case has merit go to court at all? Much easier (and generally less expensive) to make the other party whole, assuming the parties agree on what "whole" is. And if they don't agree on what "whole" is, we are back to square one and of course you'd maintain that the other side's suit is baseless.
lxgr 1y ago
Does anybody know if this also applies to "temporary chats" on ChatGPT? Given that it's not explicitly mentioned as data not being affected, I'm assuming it is.
- miles 1y ago
  > But now, OpenAI has been forced to preserve chat history even when users "elect to not retain particular conversations by manually deleting specific conversations or by starting a 'Temporary Chat,' which disappears once closed," OpenAI said. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-says-court-forcing-it-to-save-all-chatgpt-logs-is-a-privacy-nightmare/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-says-cour...
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
paxys 1y ago
> Does this court order violate GDPR or my rights under European or other privacy laws? > We are taking steps to comply at this time because we must follow the law, but The New York Times’ demand does not align with our privacy standards. That is why we’re challenging it. That's a lot of words to say "yes, we are violating GDPR".
- esafak 1y ago
  Could a European court not have ordered the same thing? Is there an exception for lawsuits?
  - lxgr 1y ago
    There is, but I highly doubt a European court would have given such an order (or if they did, it would probably be axed by a higher court pretty quickly). There's decades of legal disputes in some European countries on whether it's even legitimate for the government to mandate your ISP or phone company to collect metadata on you for after-the-fact law enforcement searches. Looking at the actual data seems much more invasive than that and, in my (non-legally trained) estimate doesn't seem like it would stand a chance at least in higher courts.
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      > There's decades of legal disputes in some European countries on whether it's even legitimate for the government to mandate your ISP or phone company to collect metadata on you for after-the-fact law enforcement searches. > Looking at the actual data seems much more invasive than that Looking at the data isn't involved in the current order, which requires OpenAI to preserve and segregate the data that would otherwise have been deleted. The reason for segregation is because any challenges OpenAI has to providing that data in disccovery will be heard before anyone other than OpenAI is ordered to have access to the data. This is, in fact, less invasive than the government mandating collection for speculative future uses, since it applies only to not destroying evidence already collected by OpenAI in the course of operating their business, and only for potential use, subject to other challenges by OpenAI, in the present case.
atleastoptimal 1y ago
I've always assumed that anything sent to any company's hosted API will be logged forever. To assume otherwise always seemed naive, like thinking that apps aren't tracking your web activity.
- lxgr 1y ago
  Assuming the worst is wise, settling for the worst case outcome without any fight seems foolish.
- fragmede 1y ago
  privacy nhilism is a decision all on its own
  - morsch 1y ago
    I'd only call it nihilism if you are in agreement with the grandparent and then do it anyway. Other choices are pretending it's not true (denialism), or just not thinking about (ignorance). Or you complicate your life by not uploading your private info.
  - Barrin92 1y ago
    not really, it's basically just being anti fragile. Consider any corporate entity that interacts with you to be an Eldritch horror from outer space that wants to siphon your soul, because that's effectively what it is, and keep your business with them to a minimum. It's just realism. Protect your private data yourself, relying on companies or governments to do it for you is like the saying goes, letting a tiger devour you up to the neck and then ask it to stop at the head
mosdl 1y ago
Its funny that OpenAI is complaining, they don't mind saying copyright doesn't apply to them if it makes them money.
- tptacek 1y ago
  You mean, like, a pretty big fraction of everybody who comments on this site?
  - gnabgib 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - tptacek 1y ago
      I'm sorry, do you think I'm kidding about that? "Situational ethics about copyright" seems like a weird charge to throw around here. I'm not being glib.
      - fc417fc802 1y ago
        Suppose that you genuinely believe that the majority of HN users suffer from "situational ethics" regarding copyright that work in their favor rather than according to any particular principle. It would remain entirely irrelevant to a discussion about a third party. Absolute best case scenario it's a red herring. That said the comment you replied to doesn't even seem to make sense in the first place. What does "violation of copyright for financial gain" (alleged, controversial) have to do with "complaining about the specifics of a court order"?
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        mosdl 1y ago
        They only care about rights when it helps them.
      - 1y ago
WorldPeas 1y ago
So how is this going to impact cursor's privacy mode, which is required by many companies for compliant usage of AI editors? For the uninitiated, in the web console this looks like: Privacy mode (enforced across all seats) OpenAI Zero-data-retention (approved) Anthropic Zero-data-retention (approved) Google Vertex AI Zero-data-retention (approved) xAi Grok Zero-data-retention (approved) did this just open another can of worms?
- 8note 1y ago
  at least, openai zero-data-retention will by court order be full retention. im excited that the law is going to push for local models
  - blerb795 1y ago
    The linked page specifically mentions that these ZDR APIs are not impacted. > This does not impact API customers who are using Zero Data Retention endpoints under our ZDR amendment.
- qmarchi 1y ago
  Likely, they're using OpenAI's Zero-Retention APIs where there's never data stored in the first place. So nothing?
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > OpenAI's Zero-Retention APIs Do we know if the court order covers these?
    - brigandish 1y ago
      Yes, follow the link at the top.
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > Yes, follow the link at the top OpenAI says “this does not impact API customers who are using Zero Data Retention endpoints under our ZDR amendment.”
junto 1y ago
This is disingenuous from OpenAI. They are being challenged because NYT believes that ChatGPT was trained with copyrighted data. NYT naively push to find a way to prove that NYT data is being used in user chats and how often. OpenAI spin that to NYT are invading user privacy. It’s quite transparent as to what they are doing here.
dumbmrblah 1y ago
So is this for all chats going forward or does it include conversations retroactively?
- steve_adams_86 1y ago
  Presumably moving forward, because otherwise the data retention policies wouldn't have been followed correctly (from what I understand)
enyt1 1y ago
[flagged]
john2x 1y ago
Does this mean that if I can get ChatGPT to generate copyrighted text, they'll get in trouble?
nhinck2 1y ago
[flagged]
tiahura 1y ago
Every concerned ChatGPT user should file an emergency motion to intervene and request for stay of the order. ChatGPT can help you draft the motion and proposed order, just give it a copy of the discovery order. The SDNY has a very helpful pro se hotline. The order the judge issued is irresponsible. Maybe ChatGPT did get too cute in its discovery responses, but the remedy isn’t to trample the rights of third parties.
vessenes 1y ago
[flagged]
- fallingknife 1y ago
  It's obviously 3 because the entire point of the NYT is that it's a newspaper and probably 99% of their traffic is from articles new enough that they haven't had time to go into the training data. So anybody who wanted to use ChatGPT to breach the NYT paywall couldn't get any new articles. Also there are so many other ways to breach a paywall that you would have to be insane to try to do it through prompt engineering ChatGPT. The whole case is a scam and I hope the court makes them pay OpenAI's legal fees.
- DrillShopper 1y ago
  > There is no way that data will stay safe forever. There is no way that, once such a facility is built, it will not be used constantly, by governments all over the world. That's on OpenAI for deciding to retain this data in the first place. They could just not have done that. That was a choice, their choice, and therefore they're responsible for it.
Duskgmxx 1y ago
[dead]
throwaway6e8f 1y ago
Agent-1, I want to legally retain all customer data indefinitely but I'm worried about a backlash from the public. Also, I'm having a bunch of problems with the NYT accusing us of copyright violation. Give me a strategy to resolve these issues so that I win in the long term.
dataflow 1y ago
> ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Edu: Your workspace admins control how long your customer content is retained. Any deleted conversations are removed from our systems within 30 days, unless we are legally required to retain them. I'm confused, how does this not affect Enterprise or Edu? They clearly possess the data, so what makes them different legally?
- oxw 1y ago
  Enterprise has an exemption granted by the judge > When we appeared before the Magistrate Judge on May 27, the Court clarified that ChatGPT Enterprise is excluded from preservation.
  - dataflow 1y ago
    Oh I missed that part, thanks. I wonder why. I guess the judge assumes it isn't being used for copyright infringement, but other plans might be?
    - bee_rider 1y ago
      No idea, but just to speculate—the court’s goal isn’t actually to scare OpenAI’s users or harm their business, right? It is to collect evidence. Maybe they just figured they don’t need to dip into that pool to get enough evidence.
    - Grikbdl 1y ago
      Who knows, it's probably the judge's twisted idea of "that'd be too far", as if cancelling basic privacy expectations of all users everywhere wouldn't be.
landonxjames 1y ago
Repeatedly calling the lawsuit baseless feels like it makes Open AI’s point a lot weaker. They obviously don’t like the suit, but I don’t think you can credibly argue that there aren’t tricky questions around the use of copyrighted materials in training data. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous.
- sigilis 1y ago
  They pay their lawyers and whoever made this page a lot for the express purpose of credibly arguing that it is very clearly totally legal and very cool to use of any IP they want to train their models. Could you with a straight face argue that the NYT newspaper could be a surrogate girlfriend for you like a GPT can be? They maintain that it is obviously a transformative use and therefore not an infringement of copyright. You and I may disagree with this assertion, but you can see how they could see this as baseless, ridiculous, and frivolous when their livelihoods depend on that being the case.
Caelus9 1y ago
Honestly, this incident makes me feel that it is really difficult to draw a clear line between “protecting privacy” and “obeying the law”. On the one hand, I am very relieved that OpenAI stood up and said “no”. After all, we all know that these systems collect everything by default, which makes people a little panic. But on the other hand, it sounds very strange that the court can directly say “give me all the data”, even those that users explicitly delete. Moreover, this also shows that everyone actually cares about their information and privacy now. No one wants to be used for anything casually.
wand3r 1y ago
Does anyone know how this can be enforced? The ruling and situation aside, to what degree is it possible to enforce something like this and what are the penalties? Even in GDPR and other data protection cases, it seems super hard to enforce. Directives to keep or delete data basically require system level access, because the company can always CRUD their data whenever they want and whatever is in their best interest. Data can ask to be produced to a court periodically and audited which could maybe catch an individual case, I guess. There is basically no way to know without literally seizing the servers in an extreme case. Also, the consequences in most cases are a fine.
- mmooss 1y ago
  This isn't the executive branch of the US government, which has Constitutional powers. It's a private company and the court can at least enforce massive penalties, presumptions against them at trial (causing them to lose), and contempt of court. Talk to a lawyer before you try something like it.
  - imiric 1y ago
    > the court can at least enforce massive penalties A.k.a. the cost of doing business.
    - mmooss 1y ago
      Businesses care deeply about money. The bravado of many businesspeople these days, that they are immune to criticism, lawsuits, etc. is a bluff. It apparently works, because many people repeat it.
      - imiric 1y ago
        When fines are a small percentage of the company's revenue, they do nothing to stop them from breaking the law. So they are in fact just the cost of doing business. E.g. Meta has been fined billions many times, yet they keep reoffending. It's basically become a revenue stream for governments.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 1y ago
[flagged]
- mmooss 1y ago
  The argument that it's doxxing was an attempt to undermine journalism. The NYT's job is to uncover information that powerful people don't want uncovered, in the public interest. If someone is wielding significant influence anonymously, it's valuable to the public to know who it is. Doxxing is publishing as much info as possible to harm vulnerable people. The NYT didn't publish Alexander's home address, cell number, credit cards, and pictures of their kids, and encourage people to track Alexander down.
- staticman2 1y ago
  That was the incident when Alexander said he didn't want an article about him turning up on the top results in Google when people were considering hiring him as a medical doctor. Using Alice in Wonderland logic, this somehow meant his fans were meant to declare holy war on the New York Times but not Google.
delusional 1y ago
I have no time for this circus. The technology anarchists in this thread need perspective. This is fundamentally a case about the legality of this product. In the extreme case, this will render the whole product category of "llm trained on copyrighted content" illegal. In that case, you will have been part of a copyright infringement on a truly massive scale. The users of these tools do NOT deserve privacy in the light of the crimes alleged. You do not get to claim to protect the privacy of the customers of your illegal venture.
anikozx 1y ago
[flagged]
6510 1y ago
The harm this is doing and will do (regardless) seems to exceed the value of the NYT. If a company is subject to a US court order that violates EU law, the company could face legal consequences in the EU for non-compliance with EU law. The GDPR mandates specific consent and legal bases for processing data, including sharing it. Assuming it is legal to share it for legal purposes one cant sufficiently anonymize the data. It needs to be accompanied by user data that allows requests to download it and for it to be deleted. I wonder what the fine would be if they just delete it per user agreement. I also wonder, could one, in the US, legally promise the customer they may delete their data then chose to keep it indefinitely and share it with others?
dvt 1y ago
> Does this court order violate GDPR or my rights under European or other privacy laws? > We are taking steps to comply at this time because we must follow the law, but The New York Times’ demand does not align with our privacy standards. That is why we’re challenging it. So basically no, lol. I wonder if we'll see the GDPR go head-to-head with Copyright Law here, that would be way more fun than OpenAI v NYT.
yoaviram 1y ago
>Trust and privacy are at the core of our products. We give you tools to control your data—including easy opt-outs and permanent removal of deleted ChatGPT chats (opens in a new window) and API content from OpenAI’s systems within 30 days. No you don't. You charge extra for privacy and list it as a feature on your enterprise plan. Not event paying pro customer get "privacy". Also, you refuse to delete personal data included in your models and training data following numerous data protection requests.
- baxtr 1y ago
  This is a typical "corporate speak" / "trustwahsing" statement. It’s usually super vague, filled with feel-good buzzwords, with a couple of empty value statements sprinkled on top.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- that_was_good 1y ago
  Except all users can opt out. Am I missing something? It says here: > If you are on a ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Pro or ChatGPT Free plan on a personal workspace, data sharing is enabled for you by default, however, you can opt out of using the data for training. Enterprise is just opt out by default... https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8983130-what-if-i-want-to-keep-my-history-on-but-disable-model-training https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8983130-what-if-i-want-t...
  - agos 1y ago
    what about all the rest of the data they use for training, there's no opt out from that
  - bartvk 1y ago
    Indeed. Click your profile in the top right, click on the settings icon. In Settings, select "Data Controls" (not "privacy") and then there's a setting called "Improve the model for everyone" (not "privacy" or "data sharing") and turn it off.
Noelia- 1y ago
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Kiyo-Lynn 1y ago
Lately I’m not even sure if the things I say on OpenAI are really mine or just part of the platform. I never used to think much when chatting, but knowing some of it might be stored for a long time makes me feel uneasy. I’m not asking for much. I just want what I delete to actually be gone.
nraynaud 1y ago
Isn't Altman collecting millions of eye scans? Since when did he care about privacy?
CjHuber 1y ago
Even though how they responded is definitely controversial, I‘m glad that they did publicize some response to it. After reading about it in the news yesterday and seeing no response on their side yet, I was worried that they would just keep silent
molf 1y ago
It would help tremendously if OpenAI would make it possible to apply for zero data retention (ZDR). For many business needs there is no reason to store or log any request at all. In theory it is possible to apply (it's mentioned on multiple locations in the documentation), but in practice requests are just being ignored. I get that approval needs to be given, and that there are barriers to entry. But it seems to me they mention zero-data retention only for marketing purposes. We have applied multiple times and have yet to receive ANY response. Reading through the forums this seems very common.
- pclmulqdq 1y ago
  The missing ingredient is money.
  - jewelry 1y ago
    not just money. How are you going to support this client’s support ticket if there is no log at all?
    - ethbr1 1y ago
      Don't. "We're unable to provide support for your request, because you disabled retention." Easy.
      - hirsin 1y ago
        They don't care, they still want support and most leadership teams are unwilling to stand behind a stance of telling customers no.
        abeppu 1y ago
        ... but why is not responding to a request for zero retention today better than not being able to respond to a future request? They're basically already saying no to customers who request this capability that they said they support, but their refusal is in the form of never responding.
mediumsmart 1y ago
Its a newspaper. They are sold for a price, not to one person and they dont come with an nda. They become part of history and Society.
conartist6 1y ago
Hey OpenAI! In your "why is this happening" you left some bits out. You make it sound like they're mad at you for no reason at all. How unreasonable of them when confronted with such honorable folks as yourselves!
energy123 1y ago
> Consumer customers: You control whether your chats are used to help improve ChatGPT within settings, and this order doesn’t change that either. Within "settings"? Is this referring to the dark pattern of providing users with a toggle "Improve model for everyone" that doesn't actually do anything? Instead users must submit a request manually on a hard to discover off-app portal, but this dark pattern has deceived them into think they don't need to look for it.
- sib301 1y ago
  Can you please elaborate?
  - energy123 1y ago
    To opt-out of your data being trained on, you need to go to https://privacy.openai.com https://privacy.openai.com and click the button "Make a Privacy Request".
    - alextheparrot 1y ago
      in the app: Settings ~> Data Controls ~> Improve the model for everyone
- curtisblaine 1y ago
  Yes, could you please explain why toggling "Improve model for everyone" off doesn't do anything and provide a link to this off-portal app that you mention?
jamesgill 1y ago
Follow the money.
udev4096 1y ago
The irony is palpable here
hombre_fatal 1y ago
You know how it's always been a meme that you'd be mortally embarrassed if your browser history ever leaked? Imagine how much worse it is for your LLM chat history to leak. It's even worse than your private comms with humans because it's a raw look at how you are when you think you're alone, untempered by social expectations.
- vitaflo 1y ago
  WTF are you asking LLMs and why would you expect any of it to be private?
  - ofjcihen 1y ago
    “Write a song in the style of Slipknot about my dumb inbred dogs. I love them very much but they are…reaaaaally dumb.” To be fair the song was intense.
  - hombre_fatal 1y ago
    It's not that the convos are necessarily icky. It's that it's like watching how someone might treat a slave when they think they're alone. And how you might talk down to or up to something that looks like another person. And how pathetic you might act when it's not doing what you want. And what level of questions you outsource to an LLM. And what things you refuse to do yourself. And how petty the tasks might be, like workshopping a stupid twitter comment before you post it. And how you copied that long text from your distraught girlfriend and asked it for some response ideas. etc. etc. etc. At the very least, I'd wager that it reveals that bit of true helpless patheticness inherent in all of us that we try so hard to hide. Show me your LLM chat history and I will learn a lot about your personality. Nothing else compares.
    - Jackpillar 1y ago
      Might have to reemphasize his question again but - what questions are you asking your LLM? Why are you responding to it and/or "treating" it differently then how you would a calculator or search engine.
tmaly 1y ago
I wonder if this would affect temporary chats too?
Muslims4Porky 1y ago
[flagged]

284 points by BUFU 1y ago

kingkawn 1y ago

Once the data is kept it is a matter of time til a new must-try use for it will be born

DanAtC 1y ago

[flagged]

supriyo-biswas 1y ago

I wonder whether OpenAI legal can make the case for storing fuzzy hashes of the content, in the form of ssdeep[1] hashes or content-defined chunks[2] of said data, instead of the actual conversations themselves. After all, since the NYT has a very limited corpus of information, and supposedly people are generating infringing content using their APIs, said hashes can be used to compare whether such content has been generated. I'd rather have them store nothing, but given the overly broad court order I think this may be the best middle ground. Of course, I haven't read the lawsuit documents and don't know if NYT is requesting far more, or alleging some indirect form of infringement which would invalidate my proposal. [1] https://ssdeep-project.github.io/ssdeep/index.html https://ssdeep-project.github.io/ssdeep/index.html [2] https://joshleeb.com/posts/content-defined-chunking.html https://joshleeb.com/posts/content-defined-chunking.html

paxys 1y ago
Yeah, try explaining any of these words to a lawyer or judge.
- landl0rd 1y ago
  "You are a long-suffering clerk speaking to a judge who's sat the same federal bench for two decades and who believes 'everything is computer' constitutes a deep technical insight."
- m463 1y ago
  "you are a helpful law assistant."
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  I thought that's what GPT was for.
- sthatipamala 1y ago
  The judges in these technical cases can be quite sophisticated and absolutely do learn terms of art. See Oracle v. Google (Java API case)
  - anshumankmr 1y ago
    As I looked up the judge for this one(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Alsup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Alsup) who was a hobbyist basic programmer, one would need a judge who coded MNIST as a passtime hobby if that is the case.
    - king_magic 1y ago
      a smart judge who is minimally tech savvy could learn to train a model to predict MNIST in a day or two
bigyabai 1y ago
All of that does fit on a real spiffy whitepaper. Let's not fool around though, every ChatGPT session is sent directly into an S3 bucket that some three-letter spook backs up onto their tapes every month. It's a database of candid, timestamped text interactions from a bunch of rubes that logged in with their Google account - you couldn't ask for a juicer target unless you reinvented email. Of course it's backdoored, you can't even begin to try proving me wrong. Maybe I'm alone, but a pinkie-promise from Sam Altman does not confer any assurances about my data to me. It's about equally as reassuring as a singing telegram from Mark Zuckerberg dancing to a song about how secure WhatsApp is.
- 7speter 1y ago
  Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe this was discussed previously, but of course openai keeps our data, they use it for training!
  - nl 1y ago
    As the linked page points out you can turn this off in settings if you are an end user or choose zero retention if you are an API user.
    - justacrow 1y ago
      I mean, they already stole and used all copyrighted material they could find to train the thing, am I supposed to believe that thry wont use my data just because I tick a checkbox?
      - stock_toaster 1y ago
        Agreed, I have hard time believing anything the eye scanning crypto coin (worldcoin or whatever) guy says at this point.
    - Jackpillar 1y ago
      I wish I could test drive your brain to experience a world where one believes that would stop them from stealing your data.
LandoCalrissian 1y ago
Trying to actively circumvent the intention of a judges order is a pretty bad idea.
- girvo 1y ago
  Deeply, deeply so. In fact so much so that people who suggest them show they've (luckily) not had to interact with the legal system much. Judges take an incredibly dim view of that kind of thing haha
- Aeolun 1y ago
  That’s not circumvention though. The intent of the order is to be able to prove that ChatGPT regurgitates NYT content, not to read the personal communications of all ChatGPT users.
delusional 1y ago
I haven't been able to find any of the supporting documents, but the court order makes it seem like OpenAI has been unhelpful in producing any alternative during the conversation. For example, the judge seems to have asked if it would be possible to segregate data that the users wanted deleted from other data, but OpenAI has failed to answer. Not just denied the request, but simply ignored it. I think it's quite likely that OpenAI has taken the PR route instead of seriously engaging with any way to constructively honor the request for retention of data.

vanattab 1y ago

Protect our privacy? Or protect thier right to piracy?

NBJack 1y ago
Agreed. I don't buy the spin.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
charrondev 1y ago
I mean the court is ordering them to retain user conversations at least until resolution of the court case (in case there is copyrighted responses being generated?). So user privacy is definitely implicated.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

amluto 1y ago

It appears that the “Zero Data Retention” APIs they mention are something that customers need to request access to, and that it’s really quite hard to get this access. I’d be more impressed if any API user could use those APIs.

singron 1y ago
If OpenAI cared about our privacy, ZDR would be a setting anyone could turn on.
JimDabell 1y ago
I believe Apple’s agreement includes this, at least when a user isn’t signed into an OpenAI account: > OpenAI must process your request solely for the purpose of fulfilling it and not store your request or any responses it provides unless required under applicable laws. OpenAI also must not use your request to improve or train its models. — https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/chatgpt-extension/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/chatgpt-extensio... I wonder if we’ll end up seeing Apple dragged into this lawsuit. I’m sure after telling their users it’s private, they won’t be happy about everything getting logged, even if they do have that caveat in there about complying with laws.
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  > I’m sure after telling their users it’s private, they won’t be happy about everything getting logged, The ZDR APIs are not and will not be logged. The linked page is clear about that.

FireBeyond 1y ago

Sure, OpenAI, I will absolutely trust you. > The content covered by the court order is stored separately in a secure system. It’s protected under legal hold, meaning it can’t be accessed or used for purposes other than meeting legal obligations. That's horse shit and OpenAI knows it. It means no such thing. A legal hold is just a 'preservation order'. It says absolutely nothing about other access or use.

fragmede 1y ago
why is it horse shit that OpenAI is saying they've put the files in a cabinet that only legal has access to?
- FireBeyond 1y ago
  They are saying a “legal hold” means that they have to keep the data but don’t worry they’re not allowed to use it or access it for any other reason. A legal hold requires no such thing and there would be no such requirement in it. They are perfectly free to access and use it for any reason.
mmooss 1y ago
OpenAI's other policies, and other laws and regulations, do have such requirements. Are they nullified because the data is held under a court order?
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  "The judge and court need to view this information to actually pass justice and decide the case" almost always supersedes other laws. The GDPR does not say that you can never be proven to have done something wrong in a court of law.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    Right. The GGP says the information could be used for other purposes.

tomhow 1y ago

Related discussion: OpenAI slams court order to save all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44185913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44185913 - June 2025 (878 comments)

dangus 1y ago

I think the court order doesn’t quite go against as many norms as OpenAI is claiming. It’s very reasonable to retain data pertinent to a case, and NYT’s case almost certainly revolves around finding out copyright infringement damages, which are calculated based on the number of violations (how many users queried ChatGPT and were returned verbatim copyrighted material from NYT). If you don’t retain that data you’re destroying evidence for the case. It’s not like the data is going to be given to anyone, it’s only gong to be used for limited legal purposes for the lawsuit (as OpenAI confirms in this article). And honestly, OpenAI should have just not used copyrighted data illegally and they would have never had this problem. I saw NYT’s filing and it had very compelling evidence that you could get ChatGPT to distribute verbatim copyrighted text from the Times without citation.

tptacek 1y ago
And honestly, OpenAI should have just not used copyrighted data illegally and they would have never had this problem The whole premise of the lawsuit is that they didn't do anything unlawful, so saying "just do what the NYT wanted you to do" isn't interesting.
- dangus 1y ago
  No, you're misinterpreting how information discovery and the court system works. The NYT made an argument to a judge about what they think is going on and how they think the copyright infringement is taking place and harming them. In their filings and hearings they present the reasoning and evidence they have that leads them to believe that a violation is occurring. The court makes a judgment on whether or not to order OpenAI to preserve and disclose information relevant to the case to the court. It's not "just do what NYT wanted you to do," it's "do what the court orders you to do based on a lawsuit brought by a plaintiff and argued to the court." I suggest you read the court filing: https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/2023/12/NYT_Complaint_Dec2023.pdf https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/2023/12/NYT_Complaint_Dec20...
lxgr 1y ago
It absolutely goes against norms in many countries other than the US, and the data of residents/citizens of these countries are affected too. > It’s not like the data is going to be given to anyone, it’s only gong to be used for limited legal purposes for the lawsuit (as OpenAI confirms in this article). Nobody other than both parties to the case, their lawyers, the court, and whatever case file storage system they use. In my view, that's already way too much given the amount and value of this data.

_jab 1y ago

> How will you store my data and who can access it? > The content covered by the court order is stored separately in a secure system. It’s protected under legal hold, meaning it can’t be accessed or used for purposes other than meeting legal obligations. > Only a small, audited OpenAI legal and security team would be able to access this data as necessary to comply with our legal obligations. So, by OpenAI's own admission, they are taking abundant and presumably effective steps to protect user privacy here? In the unlikely event that this data did somehow leak, I'd personally be blaming OpenAI, not the NYT. Some of the other language in this post, like repeatedly calling the lawsuit "baseless", really makes this just read like an unconvincing attempt at a spin piece. Nothing to see here.

sashank_1509 1y ago
Obviously openAI’s point of view will be their point of view. They are going to call this lawsuit baseless, they would not be fighting it or else.
- ivape 1y ago
  To me it's pretty clear the way this will happen. You will need to buy additional credits or subscriptions through these LLMs that feedback payment to things like NYT and book publishers. It's all stolen. I don't even want to hear it. This company doesn't want to pay up and willing to let user's privacy hang in the balance to draw the case out until they get sure footing with their device launches or the like (or additional markets like enterprise, etc).
  - fallingknife 1y ago
    Copyright is pretty narrowly tailored to verbatim reproduction of content so I doubt they will have to pay anything.
    - tiahura 1y ago
      incorrect. copyright applies to derived works.

sega_sai 1y ago

Strange smear against NYT. If NYT has a case, and the court approves that, it's bizarre to to use the court order to smear NYT. If there is no case, "Open"AI will have a chance to prove its case in court.

tptacek 1y ago
They're a party to the case! Saying it's baseless isn't a "smear". There is literally nothing else they can say (other than something synonymous with "baseless", like "without merit").
- lucianbr 1y ago
  Oh they definitely can say other things. It's just that it would be inconvenient. They might lose money. I wonder if the laws and legal procedures are written considering this general assumption that a party to a lawsuit will naturally lie if it is in their interest. And then I read articles and comments about a "trust based society"...
  - tptacek 1y ago
    I'm not taking one side or the other in the case itself, but it's lazy and superficial to suggest that the defendant in a civil suit would say anything other than that the suit has no merit. The version of this statement where they generously interpret anything the NYT (I subscribe) says, they might as well just surrender. I'm not sticking up for OpenAI so much as just for decent, interesting threads here.
  - wilg 1y ago
    > They might lose money. I expect it's more about them losing the _case_. Silly to expect someone fighting a lawsuit not to try to win it.
  - fastball 1y ago
    This is the nature of the civil court system – it exists for when parties disagree. Why would a defendant who agrees a case has merit go to court at all? Much easier (and generally less expensive) to make the other party whole, assuming the parties agree on what "whole" is. And if they don't agree on what "whole" is, we are back to square one and of course you'd maintain that the other side's suit is baseless.

lxgr 1y ago

Does anybody know if this also applies to "temporary chats" on ChatGPT? Given that it's not explicitly mentioned as data not being affected, I'm assuming it is.

miles 1y ago
> But now, OpenAI has been forced to preserve chat history even when users "elect to not retain particular conversations by manually deleting specific conversations or by starting a 'Temporary Chat,' which disappears once closed," OpenAI said. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-says-court-forcing-it-to-save-all-chatgpt-logs-is-a-privacy-nightmare/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-says-cour...

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

paxys 1y ago

> Does this court order violate GDPR or my rights under European or other privacy laws? > We are taking steps to comply at this time because we must follow the law, but The New York Times’ demand does not align with our privacy standards. That is why we’re challenging it. That's a lot of words to say "yes, we are violating GDPR".

esafak 1y ago
Could a European court not have ordered the same thing? Is there an exception for lawsuits?
- lxgr 1y ago
  There is, but I highly doubt a European court would have given such an order (or if they did, it would probably be axed by a higher court pretty quickly). There's decades of legal disputes in some European countries on whether it's even legitimate for the government to mandate your ISP or phone company to collect metadata on you for after-the-fact law enforcement searches. Looking at the actual data seems much more invasive than that and, in my (non-legally trained) estimate doesn't seem like it would stand a chance at least in higher courts.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > There's decades of legal disputes in some European countries on whether it's even legitimate for the government to mandate your ISP or phone company to collect metadata on you for after-the-fact law enforcement searches. > Looking at the actual data seems much more invasive than that Looking at the data isn't involved in the current order, which requires OpenAI to preserve and segregate the data that would otherwise have been deleted. The reason for segregation is because any challenges OpenAI has to providing that data in disccovery will be heard before anyone other than OpenAI is ordered to have access to the data. This is, in fact, less invasive than the government mandating collection for speculative future uses, since it applies only to not destroying evidence already collected by OpenAI in the course of operating their business, and only for potential use, subject to other challenges by OpenAI, in the present case.

atleastoptimal 1y ago

I've always assumed that anything sent to any company's hosted API will be logged forever. To assume otherwise always seemed naive, like thinking that apps aren't tracking your web activity.

lxgr 1y ago
Assuming the worst is wise, settling for the worst case outcome without any fight seems foolish.
fragmede 1y ago
privacy nhilism is a decision all on its own
- morsch 1y ago
  I'd only call it nihilism if you are in agreement with the grandparent and then do it anyway. Other choices are pretending it's not true (denialism), or just not thinking about (ignorance). Or you complicate your life by not uploading your private info.
- Barrin92 1y ago
  not really, it's basically just being anti fragile. Consider any corporate entity that interacts with you to be an Eldritch horror from outer space that wants to siphon your soul, because that's effectively what it is, and keep your business with them to a minimum. It's just realism. Protect your private data yourself, relying on companies or governments to do it for you is like the saying goes, letting a tiger devour you up to the neck and then ask it to stop at the head

mosdl 1y ago

Its funny that OpenAI is complaining, they don't mind saying copyright doesn't apply to them if it makes them money.

tptacek 1y ago
You mean, like, a pretty big fraction of everybody who comments on this site?
- gnabgib 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - tptacek 1y ago
    I'm sorry, do you think I'm kidding about that? "Situational ethics about copyright" seems like a weird charge to throw around here. I'm not being glib.
    - fc417fc802 1y ago
      Suppose that you genuinely believe that the majority of HN users suffer from "situational ethics" regarding copyright that work in their favor rather than according to any particular principle. It would remain entirely irrelevant to a discussion about a third party. Absolute best case scenario it's a red herring. That said the comment you replied to doesn't even seem to make sense in the first place. What does "violation of copyright for financial gain" (alleged, controversial) have to do with "complaining about the specifics of a court order"?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - mosdl 1y ago
        They only care about rights when it helps them.
    - 1y ago

WorldPeas 1y ago

So how is this going to impact cursor's privacy mode, which is required by many companies for compliant usage of AI editors? For the uninitiated, in the web console this looks like: Privacy mode (enforced across all seats) OpenAI Zero-data-retention (approved) Anthropic Zero-data-retention (approved) Google Vertex AI Zero-data-retention (approved) xAi Grok Zero-data-retention (approved) did this just open another can of worms?

8note 1y ago
at least, openai zero-data-retention will by court order be full retention. im excited that the law is going to push for local models
- blerb795 1y ago
  The linked page specifically mentions that these ZDR APIs are not impacted. > This does not impact API customers who are using Zero Data Retention endpoints under our ZDR amendment.
qmarchi 1y ago
Likely, they're using OpenAI's Zero-Retention APIs where there's never data stored in the first place. So nothing?
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > OpenAI's Zero-Retention APIs Do we know if the court order covers these?
  - brigandish 1y ago
    Yes, follow the link at the top.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Yes, follow the link at the top OpenAI says “this does not impact API customers who are using Zero Data Retention endpoints under our ZDR amendment.”

junto 1y ago

This is disingenuous from OpenAI. They are being challenged because NYT believes that ChatGPT was trained with copyrighted data. NYT naively push to find a way to prove that NYT data is being used in user chats and how often. OpenAI spin that to NYT are invading user privacy. It’s quite transparent as to what they are doing here.

dumbmrblah 1y ago

So is this for all chats going forward or does it include conversations retroactively?

steve_adams_86 1y ago
Presumably moving forward, because otherwise the data retention policies wouldn't have been followed correctly (from what I understand)

enyt1 1y ago

[flagged]

john2x 1y ago

Does this mean that if I can get ChatGPT to generate copyrighted text, they'll get in trouble?

nhinck2 1y ago

[flagged]

tiahura 1y ago

Every concerned ChatGPT user should file an emergency motion to intervene and request for stay of the order. ChatGPT can help you draft the motion and proposed order, just give it a copy of the discovery order. The SDNY has a very helpful pro se hotline. The order the judge issued is irresponsible. Maybe ChatGPT did get too cute in its discovery responses, but the remedy isn’t to trample the rights of third parties.

vessenes 1y ago

[flagged]

fallingknife 1y ago
It's obviously 3 because the entire point of the NYT is that it's a newspaper and probably 99% of their traffic is from articles new enough that they haven't had time to go into the training data. So anybody who wanted to use ChatGPT to breach the NYT paywall couldn't get any new articles. Also there are so many other ways to breach a paywall that you would have to be insane to try to do it through prompt engineering ChatGPT. The whole case is a scam and I hope the court makes them pay OpenAI's legal fees.
DrillShopper 1y ago
> There is no way that data will stay safe forever. There is no way that, once such a facility is built, it will not be used constantly, by governments all over the world. That's on OpenAI for deciding to retain this data in the first place. They could just not have done that. That was a choice, their choice, and therefore they're responsible for it.

Duskgmxx 1y ago

[dead]

throwaway6e8f 1y ago

Agent-1, I want to legally retain all customer data indefinitely but I'm worried about a backlash from the public. Also, I'm having a bunch of problems with the NYT accusing us of copyright violation. Give me a strategy to resolve these issues so that I win in the long term.

dataflow 1y ago

> ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Edu: Your workspace admins control how long your customer content is retained. Any deleted conversations are removed from our systems within 30 days, unless we are legally required to retain them. I'm confused, how does this not affect Enterprise or Edu? They clearly possess the data, so what makes them different legally?

oxw 1y ago
Enterprise has an exemption granted by the judge > When we appeared before the Magistrate Judge on May 27, the Court clarified that ChatGPT Enterprise is excluded from preservation.
- dataflow 1y ago
  Oh I missed that part, thanks. I wonder why. I guess the judge assumes it isn't being used for copyright infringement, but other plans might be?
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    No idea, but just to speculate—the court’s goal isn’t actually to scare OpenAI’s users or harm their business, right? It is to collect evidence. Maybe they just figured they don’t need to dip into that pool to get enough evidence.
  - Grikbdl 1y ago
    Who knows, it's probably the judge's twisted idea of "that'd be too far", as if cancelling basic privacy expectations of all users everywhere wouldn't be.

landonxjames 1y ago

Repeatedly calling the lawsuit baseless feels like it makes Open AI’s point a lot weaker. They obviously don’t like the suit, but I don’t think you can credibly argue that there aren’t tricky questions around the use of copyrighted materials in training data. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous.

sigilis 1y ago
They pay their lawyers and whoever made this page a lot for the express purpose of credibly arguing that it is very clearly totally legal and very cool to use of any IP they want to train their models. Could you with a straight face argue that the NYT newspaper could be a surrogate girlfriend for you like a GPT can be? They maintain that it is obviously a transformative use and therefore not an infringement of copyright. You and I may disagree with this assertion, but you can see how they could see this as baseless, ridiculous, and frivolous when their livelihoods depend on that being the case.

Caelus9 1y ago

Honestly, this incident makes me feel that it is really difficult to draw a clear line between “protecting privacy” and “obeying the law”. On the one hand, I am very relieved that OpenAI stood up and said “no”. After all, we all know that these systems collect everything by default, which makes people a little panic. But on the other hand, it sounds very strange that the court can directly say “give me all the data”, even those that users explicitly delete. Moreover, this also shows that everyone actually cares about their information and privacy now. No one wants to be used for anything casually.

wand3r 1y ago

Does anyone know how this can be enforced? The ruling and situation aside, to what degree is it possible to enforce something like this and what are the penalties? Even in GDPR and other data protection cases, it seems super hard to enforce. Directives to keep or delete data basically require system level access, because the company can always CRUD their data whenever they want and whatever is in their best interest. Data can ask to be produced to a court periodically and audited which could maybe catch an individual case, I guess. There is basically no way to know without literally seizing the servers in an extreme case. Also, the consequences in most cases are a fine.

mmooss 1y ago
This isn't the executive branch of the US government, which has Constitutional powers. It's a private company and the court can at least enforce massive penalties, presumptions against them at trial (causing them to lose), and contempt of court. Talk to a lawyer before you try something like it.
- imiric 1y ago
  > the court can at least enforce massive penalties A.k.a. the cost of doing business.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    Businesses care deeply about money. The bravado of many businesspeople these days, that they are immune to criticism, lawsuits, etc. is a bluff. It apparently works, because many people repeat it.
    - imiric 1y ago
      When fines are a small percentage of the company's revenue, they do nothing to stop them from breaking the law. So they are in fact just the cost of doing business. E.g. Meta has been fined billions many times, yet they keep reoffending. It's basically become a revenue stream for governments.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 1y ago

[flagged]

mmooss 1y ago
The argument that it's doxxing was an attempt to undermine journalism. The NYT's job is to uncover information that powerful people don't want uncovered, in the public interest. If someone is wielding significant influence anonymously, it's valuable to the public to know who it is. Doxxing is publishing as much info as possible to harm vulnerable people. The NYT didn't publish Alexander's home address, cell number, credit cards, and pictures of their kids, and encourage people to track Alexander down.
staticman2 1y ago
That was the incident when Alexander said he didn't want an article about him turning up on the top results in Google when people were considering hiring him as a medical doctor. Using Alice in Wonderland logic, this somehow meant his fans were meant to declare holy war on the New York Times but not Google.

delusional 1y ago

I have no time for this circus. The technology anarchists in this thread need perspective. This is fundamentally a case about the legality of this product. In the extreme case, this will render the whole product category of "llm trained on copyrighted content" illegal. In that case, you will have been part of a copyright infringement on a truly massive scale. The users of these tools do NOT deserve privacy in the light of the crimes alleged. You do not get to claim to protect the privacy of the customers of your illegal venture.

anikozx 1y ago

[flagged]

6510 1y ago

The harm this is doing and will do (regardless) seems to exceed the value of the NYT. If a company is subject to a US court order that violates EU law, the company could face legal consequences in the EU for non-compliance with EU law. The GDPR mandates specific consent and legal bases for processing data, including sharing it. Assuming it is legal to share it for legal purposes one cant sufficiently anonymize the data. It needs to be accompanied by user data that allows requests to download it and for it to be deleted. I wonder what the fine would be if they just delete it per user agreement. I also wonder, could one, in the US, legally promise the customer they may delete their data then chose to keep it indefinitely and share it with others?

dvt 1y ago

> Does this court order violate GDPR or my rights under European or other privacy laws? > We are taking steps to comply at this time because we must follow the law, but The New York Times’ demand does not align with our privacy standards. That is why we’re challenging it. So basically no, lol. I wonder if we'll see the GDPR go head-to-head with Copyright Law here, that would be way more fun than OpenAI v NYT.

yoaviram 1y ago

>Trust and privacy are at the core of our products. We give you tools to control your data—including easy opt-outs and permanent removal of deleted ChatGPT chats (opens in a new window) and API content from OpenAI’s systems within 30 days. No you don't. You charge extra for privacy and list it as a feature on your enterprise plan. Not event paying pro customer get "privacy". Also, you refuse to delete personal data included in your models and training data following numerous data protection requests.

baxtr 1y ago
This is a typical "corporate speak" / "trustwahsing" statement. It’s usually super vague, filled with feel-good buzzwords, with a couple of empty value statements sprinkled on top.
deleted 1y ago
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that_was_good 1y ago
Except all users can opt out. Am I missing something? It says here: > If you are on a ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Pro or ChatGPT Free plan on a personal workspace, data sharing is enabled for you by default, however, you can opt out of using the data for training. Enterprise is just opt out by default... https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8983130-what-if-i-want-to-keep-my-history-on-but-disable-model-training https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8983130-what-if-i-want-t...
- agos 1y ago
  what about all the rest of the data they use for training, there's no opt out from that
- bartvk 1y ago
  Indeed. Click your profile in the top right, click on the settings icon. In Settings, select "Data Controls" (not "privacy") and then there's a setting called "Improve the model for everyone" (not "privacy" or "data sharing") and turn it off.

Noelia- 1y ago

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Kiyo-Lynn 1y ago

Lately I’m not even sure if the things I say on OpenAI are really mine or just part of the platform. I never used to think much when chatting, but knowing some of it might be stored for a long time makes me feel uneasy. I’m not asking for much. I just want what I delete to actually be gone.

nraynaud 1y ago

Isn't Altman collecting millions of eye scans? Since when did he care about privacy?

CjHuber 1y ago

Even though how they responded is definitely controversial, I‘m glad that they did publicize some response to it. After reading about it in the news yesterday and seeing no response on their side yet, I was worried that they would just keep silent

molf 1y ago

It would help tremendously if OpenAI would make it possible to apply for zero data retention (ZDR). For many business needs there is no reason to store or log any request at all. In theory it is possible to apply (it's mentioned on multiple locations in the documentation), but in practice requests are just being ignored. I get that approval needs to be given, and that there are barriers to entry. But it seems to me they mention zero-data retention only for marketing purposes. We have applied multiple times and have yet to receive ANY response. Reading through the forums this seems very common.

pclmulqdq 1y ago
The missing ingredient is money.
- jewelry 1y ago
  not just money. How are you going to support this client’s support ticket if there is no log at all?
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    Don't. "We're unable to provide support for your request, because you disabled retention." Easy.
    - hirsin 1y ago
      They don't care, they still want support and most leadership teams are unwilling to stand behind a stance of telling customers no.
      - abeppu 1y ago
        ... but why is not responding to a request for zero retention today better than not being able to respond to a future request? They're basically already saying no to customers who request this capability that they said they support, but their refusal is in the form of never responding.

mediumsmart 1y ago

Its a newspaper. They are sold for a price, not to one person and they dont come with an nda. They become part of history and Society.

conartist6 1y ago

Hey OpenAI! In your "why is this happening" you left some bits out. You make it sound like they're mad at you for no reason at all. How unreasonable of them when confronted with such honorable folks as yourselves!

energy123 1y ago

> Consumer customers: You control whether your chats are used to help improve ChatGPT within settings, and this order doesn’t change that either. Within "settings"? Is this referring to the dark pattern of providing users with a toggle "Improve model for everyone" that doesn't actually do anything? Instead users must submit a request manually on a hard to discover off-app portal, but this dark pattern has deceived them into think they don't need to look for it.

sib301 1y ago
Can you please elaborate?
- energy123 1y ago
  To opt-out of your data being trained on, you need to go to https://privacy.openai.com https://privacy.openai.com and click the button "Make a Privacy Request".
  - alextheparrot 1y ago
    in the app: Settings ~> Data Controls ~> Improve the model for everyone
curtisblaine 1y ago
Yes, could you please explain why toggling "Improve model for everyone" off doesn't do anything and provide a link to this off-portal app that you mention?

jamesgill 1y ago

Follow the money.

udev4096 1y ago

The irony is palpable here

hombre_fatal 1y ago

You know how it's always been a meme that you'd be mortally embarrassed if your browser history ever leaked? Imagine how much worse it is for your LLM chat history to leak. It's even worse than your private comms with humans because it's a raw look at how you are when you think you're alone, untempered by social expectations.

vitaflo 1y ago
WTF are you asking LLMs and why would you expect any of it to be private?
- ofjcihen 1y ago
  “Write a song in the style of Slipknot about my dumb inbred dogs. I love them very much but they are…reaaaaally dumb.” To be fair the song was intense.
- hombre_fatal 1y ago
  It's not that the convos are necessarily icky. It's that it's like watching how someone might treat a slave when they think they're alone. And how you might talk down to or up to something that looks like another person. And how pathetic you might act when it's not doing what you want. And what level of questions you outsource to an LLM. And what things you refuse to do yourself. And how petty the tasks might be, like workshopping a stupid twitter comment before you post it. And how you copied that long text from your distraught girlfriend and asked it for some response ideas. etc. etc. etc. At the very least, I'd wager that it reveals that bit of true helpless patheticness inherent in all of us that we try so hard to hide. Show me your LLM chat history and I will learn a lot about your personality. Nothing else compares.
  - Jackpillar 1y ago
    Might have to reemphasize his question again but - what questions are you asking your LLM? Why are you responding to it and/or "treating" it differently then how you would a calculator or search engine.

tmaly 1y ago

I wonder if this would affect temporary chats too?

Muslims4Porky 1y ago

[flagged]