OpenAI slams court order that lets NYT read 20 million complete user chats
OpenAI is currently seeking to overturn a court ruling that mandates the company to provide 20 million user conversations to The New York Times and other plaintiffs involved in a copyright infringement lawsuit. This legal battle stems from allegations that OpenAI’s ChatGPT may have utilized copyrighted material without permission. While OpenAI had initially proposed to share 20 million chats as a compromise to the plaintiffs’ request for 120 million, the company argues that the court’s order is excessively broad and poses significant privacy concerns. In a recent filing with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, OpenAI highlighted that the logs in question represent complete conversations, which could inadvertently reveal sensitive user information.
The AI company contends that disclosing entire chat logs is far more intrusive than sharing isolated prompt-output pairs, as full conversations can expose a wealth of private details. OpenAI emphasized that “more than 99.99%” of the conversations in the dataset are irrelevant to the ongoing case, calling for the court to vacate the order and instead encourage the plaintiffs to engage with OpenAI’s proposal for identifying pertinent logs. This dispute underscores the delicate balance between intellectual property rights and user privacy in the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence. As the case progresses, OpenAI may also pursue further legal action in a federal court of appeals, indicating the potential for a protracted legal struggle over the implications of AI-generated content and user data privacy.
OpenAI wants a court to reverse a ruling forcing the ChatGPT maker to give 20 million user chats to The New York Times and other news plaintiffs that sued it over alleged copyright infringement. Although OpenAI previously
offered 20 million user chats
as a counter to the NYT’s demand for 120 million, the AI company says a court order requiring production of the chats is too broad.
“The logs at issue here are
complete conversations
: each log in the 20 million sample represents a complete exchange of multiple prompt-output pairs between a user and ChatGPT,” OpenAI said today in a
filing
in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. “Disclosure of those logs is thus much more likely to expose private information [than individual prompt-output pairs], in the same way that eavesdropping on an entire conversation reveals more private information than a 5-second conversation fragment.”
OpenAI’s filing said that “more than 99.99%” of the chats “have
nothing to do
with this case.” It asked the district court to “vacate the order and order News Plaintiffs to respond to OpenAI’s proposal for identifying relevant logs.” OpenAI could also seek review in a federal court of appeals.
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