OpenAI is contesting a court ruling in a copyright case initiated by The New York Times, which mandates the company to retain ChatGPT output data indefinitely. OpenAI argues that this order infringes on the privacy guarantees it provides to users.
Last month, a court determined that OpenAI must conserve and separate all output log data following a request from The Times to ensure its preservation.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed strong opposition to the ruling in a post on X, stating, “We will fight any demand that compromises our users’ privacy; this is a core principle.” He further criticized The Times’ request as inappropriate and warned it could establish a troubling precedent.
On June 3, US District Judge Sidney Stein was asked to vacate the data preservation order that had been issued in May, according to court documents.
The New York Times has not provided a comment regarding the matter outside of regular business hours.
The newspaper filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, alleging that both companies utilized millions of its articles without authorization to train the large language model underlying the widely-used chatbot.
In an earlier opinion released in April, Judge Stein indicated that The Times had successfully argued that OpenAI and Microsoft had contributed to copyright infringements by encouraging users to violate copyright laws.
He noted that previously published examples of ChatGPT generating content based on The Times’ articles warranted continuing the claims against OpenAI and Microsoft.
© Thomson Reuters 2025
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