OpenAI is challenging a recent U.S. court directive that would force it to preserve indefinitely all ChatGPT conversations, including chats that users believed were deleted. The move emerges from a copyright lawsuit spearheaded by The New York Times, and OpenAI is warning of a potential “privacy nightmare” for millions of users worldwide.
In a contentious turn in May, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein ruled that OpenAI must preserve all ChatGPT output logs—consumer queries, responses, and metadata—indefinitely and separate these records from its standard storage systems. The Times argued this information is crucial to uncover whether the AI reproduced content from behind its paywalls.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman further emphasized, “We will fight any demand that compromises our users’ privacy; this is a core principle”
OpenAI’s user agreements and even businesses’ “Zero Data Retention” settings may not shield third-party mandates, and deleted conversations aren’t truly gone
This isn’t just a legal dispute. It’s a bellwether for how user-generated AI data will be treated globally. Wake up my friends. Don’t put anything confidential in the prompts. You can ask the same question with fake names.
