In a small but significant victory for OpenAI, the court ruling forces the company to store all of its ChatGPT data indefinitely. was removed.
Original order dated May 13 — which OpenAI vehemently opposed — arose from an ongoing lawsuit filed New York Times in 2023. The document claims that OpenAI trained its AI models on Time content without proper permission or compensation. NOW is one of several news publishers is currently suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, including Interception, Alternationand ZiffDavis, Mashable's parent company.
In a new order filed on October 9Federal Judge Ona T. Wang relieved OpenAI of its obligation to “retain and segregate all log output that would otherwise be deleted in the future.” With some exceptions, a company is no longer required to maintain logs after September 26th.
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The original conservation order allowed NOW to investigate claims of copyright infringement. OpenAI, however, argues that this requirement is “excessive” and could compromise user privacy and data security. The company ultimately lost that fight as Judge Wang ruled that ChatGPT users were not parties to the lawsuit. By July, plaintiffs began combing through the surviving logs, which largely consisted of ChatGPT results.
Although the save order is now cancelled, any logs saved under it remain accessible. OpenAI is also still required to retain logs associated with accounts specifically flagged New York Times.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable's parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April, alleging that it violated Ziff Davis' copyrights in the training and operation of its artificial intelligence systems.
