ChatGPT creator must turn over 20M chat logs in copyright litigation, federal judge says
OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, must turn over 20 million chat logs in its copyright litigation with the New York Times and other news media, a federal judge ruled Monday. (Image from Shutterstock)
OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, must turn over 20 million chat logs in its copyright litigation with the New York Times and other news media, a federal judge ruled Monday.
U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein of the Southern District of New York affirmed a pair of earlier orders from U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona Wang of New York, who rejected OpenAI’s proposal to run a search to identify conversations involving the New York Times and its co-plaintiffs, rather than produce all the chat logs, Law.com reports.
Stein also rejected OpenAI’s assertion that producing the chat logs would invade its users’ privacy.
“Judge Wang’s rulings were neither clearly erroneous nor contrary to law,” Stein wrote in the order. “She adequately balanced ChatGPT users’ privacy interests against the relevance of the documents in light of the privacy protections already in place.”
Wang noted that users’ privacy interests were protected by limiting the plaintiffs’ discovery request to 20 million chat logs, OpenAI’s “de-identification” of the chat log sample, and an existing protective order in the case, Stein also said.
Central to the case is the New York Times and other plaintiffs’ allegations that OpenAI used their works to train ChatGPT without permission. In July, they moved to compel the company to produce a sample of 120 million chat logs. OpenAI opposed the motion, offering instead to provide a sample of 20 million chat logs that would be scrubbed of personally identifiable information and other private information.
Plaintiffs agreed to the proposal but noted that they would continue to request a larger sample, according to Stein’s order.
“This case is also a telling reminder that—regardless of your privacy settings—your interactions with AI chatbots and other systems may, one day, be produced in court,” Ilia Kolochenko, a partner and a cybersecurity practice lead at Platt Law, told Law.com.
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