OpenAI appeals data preservation order in New York Times copyright lawsuit

Reuters

OpenAI is challenging a court order that requires it to indefinitely preserve ChatGPT output data in an ongoing copyright lawsuit filed by The New York Times, arguing that the mandate risks violating user privacy.

In a court filing submitted on June 3, OpenAI asked U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein to vacate the data preservation order issued in May. The company contends that maintaining all user output logs indefinitely conflicts with its stated privacy commitments.

"We will fight any demand that compromises our users' privacy; this is a core principle," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday. “We think this [The Times’ demand] was an inappropriate request that sets a bad precedent.”

The dispute stems from a lawsuit filed in 2023 by The New York Times against both OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the companies used millions of the newspaper’s articles without authorization to train generative AI models. The suit is seen as one of the most significant legal tests to date of how copyright law applies to artificial intelligence training data.

While The New York Times declined to comment on the appeal, earlier court filings showed the newspaper had requested preservation of all relevant ChatGPT outputs to support its claims.

Judge Stein previously allowed the case to proceed, stating in an April opinion that the Times had made a plausible case that OpenAI and Microsoft may have “induced” users to infringe on its copyrights. He cited the Times' documentation of "numerous" and "widely publicized" instances where ChatGPT reproduced its content.

The outcome of the appeal could influence how courts balance user privacy with evidentiary demands in copyright litigation involving AI-generated content — a legal frontier with growing implications for both tech companies and media organizations.

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