OpenAI will stop saving users’ deleted posts

A controversial court order has forced OpenAI to save users’ deleted posts “indefinitely” as part of its ongoing legal battle with The New York Times. However, that seems to be mostly over, for now.

It was OpenAI Times sued in December 2023 for allegedly using The Times’s copyrighted material to train its algorithm. Other news organizations too Join the lawsuit. As part of that case, the AI ​​company was previously ordered to retain its chat logs “indefinitely” — including deleted logs — so they could be examined for potential evidence related to the case. Ars Technica previously noted This court order was too broad, and affected the privacy of “hundreds of millions of ChatGPT users globally.”

In fact, OpenAI drew significant criticism over the order when it was put in place, calling it an attack on users’ privacy. “The New York Times and other plaintiffs have made a sweeping and unnecessary demand in their baseless lawsuit against us: retain ChatGPT and consumer API customer data indefinitely,” said Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI. In June.

Well, it looks like the great chat history saga has come to an end. Ars now Reports itOn Thursday, US Judge Ona Wang approved a joint action brought by both OpenAI and the Times, which vacated the preservation order that had previously been in place, allowing the company to physically delete deleted chat logs. However, Ars notes that “deleted and cached conversations will still be subject to monitoring” for some users, though it’s a bit unclear who might be affected.

Chat logs already maintained will continue to be made available to news organizations involved in the legal case, as part of efforts to uncover examples of chatbot “output that infringes on their articles or attributes misleading information to their posts,” Ars notes.

While the drama of keeping chat history may be over, what’s not over yet is the battle over copyright law that currently embroils the AI ​​industry. At this point, OpenAI He was sued Several times for similar reasons. So did I Other artificial intelligence companies. The copyright issues surrounding generative AI remain largely unresolved, or rather, in the process of being settled through the ongoing legal battles currently unfolding.