OpenAI defends privacy of hundreds of millions of ChatGPT users:
OpenAI is now fighting a court order to preserve all ChatGPT user logs—including deleted chats and sensitive chats logged through its API business offering—after news organizations suing over copyright claims accused the AI company of destroying evidence.
"Before OpenAI had an opportunity to respond to those unfounded accusations, the court ordered OpenAI to 'preserve and segregate all output log data that would otherwise be deleted on a going forward basis until further order of the Court (in essence, the output log data that OpenAI has been destroying)," OpenAI explained in a court filing demanding oral arguments in a bid to block the controversial order.
In the filing, OpenAI alleged that the court rushed the order based only on a hunch raised by The New York Times and other news plaintiffs. And now, without "any just cause," OpenAI argued, the order "continues to prevent OpenAI from respecting its users' privacy decisions." That risk extended to users of ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro, as well as users of OpenAI's application programming interface (API), OpenAI said.
The court order came after news organizations expressed concern that people using ChatGPT to skirt paywalls "might be more likely to 'delete all [their] searches' to cover their tracks," OpenAI explained. Evidence to support that claim, news plaintiffs argued, was missing from the record because so far, OpenAI had only shared samples of chat logs that users had agreed that the company could retain. Sharing the news plaintiffs' concerns, the judge, Ona Wang, ultimately agreed that OpenAI likely would never stop deleting that alleged evidence absent a court order, granting news plaintiffs' request to preserve all chats.
OpenAI argued the May 13 order was premature and should be vacated, until, "at a minimum," news organizations can establish a substantial need for OpenAI to preserve all chat logs. They warned that the privacy of hundreds of millions of ChatGPT users globally is at risk every day that the "sweeping, unprecedented" order continues to be enforced.
"As a result, OpenAI is forced to jettison its commitment to allow users to control when and how their ChatGPT conversation data is used, and whether it is retained," OpenAI argued.
Meanwhile, there is no evidence beyond speculation yet supporting claims that "OpenAI had intentionally deleted data," OpenAI alleged. And supposedly there is not "a single piece of evidence supporting" claims that copyright-infringing ChatGPT users are more likely to delete their chats.
"OpenAI did not 'destroy' any data, and certainly did not delete any data in response to litigation events," OpenAI argued. "The Order appears to have incorrectly assumed the contrary."
At a conference in January, Wang raised a hypothetical in line with her thinking on the subsequent order. She asked OpenAI's legal team to consider a ChatGPT user who "found some way to get around the pay wall" and "was getting The New York Times content somehow as the output." If that user "then hears about this case and says, 'Oh, whoa, you know I'm going to ask them to delete all of my searches and not retain any of my searches going forward,'" the judge asked, wouldn't that be "directly the problem" that the order would address?
[...] Before the order was in place mid-May, OpenAI only retained "chat history" for users of ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro who did not opt out of data retention. But now, OpenAI has been forced to preserve chat history even when users "elect to not retain particular conversations by manually deleting specific conversations or by starting a 'Temporary Chat,' which disappears once closed," OpenAI said. Previously, users could also request to "delete their OpenAI accounts entirely, including all prior conversation history," which was then purged within 30 days.
While OpenAI rejects claims that ordinary users use ChatGPT to access news articles, the company noted that including OpenAI's business customers in the order made "even less sense," since API conversation data "is subject to standard retention policies." That means API customers couldn't delete all their searches based on their customers' activity, which is the supposed basis for requiring OpenAI to retain sensitive data.
"The court nevertheless required OpenAI to continue preserving API Conversation Data as well," OpenAI argued, in support of lifting the order on the API chat logs.
[...] It's unclear if OpenAI will be able to get the judge to waver if oral arguments are scheduled.
Wang previously justified the broad order partly due to the news organizations' claim that "the volume of deleted conversations is significant." She suggested that OpenAI could have taken steps to anonymize the chat logs but chose not to, only making an argument for why it "would not" be able to segregate data, rather than explaining why it "can't."
Related Stories
After a court ordered OpenAI to "indefinitely" retain all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats, of millions of users, two panicked users tried and failed to intervene.
[...]
In May, Judge Ona Wang, who drafted the order, rejected the first user's request [PDF] on behalf of his company simply because the company should have hired a lawyer to draft the filing. But more recently, Wang rejected a second claim from another ChatGPT user, Aidan Hunt, and that order went into greater detail, revealing how the judge is considering opposition to the order ahead of oral arguments this week, which were urgently requested by OpenAI.The second claim [PDF] to intervene came from Aidan Hunt, who said that he uses ChatGPT "from time to time," occasionally sending OpenAI "highly sensitive personal and commercial information in the course of using the service."
[...]
Hunt claimed that he only learned that ChatGPT was retaining this information—despite policies specifying they would not—by stumbling upon the news in an online forum. Feeling that his Fourth Amendment and due process rights were being infringed, Hunt sought to influence the court's decision and proposed a motion to vacate the order that said Wang's "order effectively requires Defendants to implement a mass surveillance program affecting all ChatGPT users."
[...]
(Score: 3, Funny) by epitaxial on Wednesday June 11, @05:27PM (7 children)
Nothing happens anymore when you ignore a court order.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday June 11, @09:10PM (4 children)
Legally, as far as I know (which is not very far), if a company is involved in litigation where 'discovery' is, or could reasonably be assumed to be, part of the process, then it is normal practice to stop deleting 'stuff'.
This caused problems for backup operators who were habituated to re-using tapes on a cyclic backup strategy, as suddenly you could no longer overwrite old tapes and had to buy new, blank ones to use instead.
If you run a process that normally deleted logs, you have to retain them until the litigation is over.
This is all entirely normal legal practice. OpenAI is going against a lot of precedent here.
Cooley: Information Retention Policies and E-Discovery Best Practices & New Developments (SD ACC All Day MCLE September 22, 2021) (PDF) [acc.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 11, @11:43PM (3 children)
Whoosh
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday June 12, @12:21PM (2 children)
OK, I missed something: would you be so kind as to point out the (obvious to you) thing I missed?
If I'm being ignorant, please point me towards education. Even autodidacts need feedback.
Lack of sleep might be causing me to be more slow-witted than usual.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12, @03:51PM (1 child)
Court orders are optional under the orange moon.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday June 12, @10:12PM
True of court odors. But executive odors don't make good scents either.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Thursday June 12, @08:27AM
Depends whose side you're on...
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Thursday June 12, @12:29PM
What is AI trying to hide? Is there a "smoking gun" in those logs.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII