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Sam Altman says AI chats should be as private as talking to a lawyer or a
doctor, but OpenAI could soon be forced to keep your ChatGPT conversations
forever

Date:
Fri, 06 Jun 2025 16:50:31 +0000

Description:
As part of the New York Times copyright infringement lawsuit, OpenAI may be
forced to keep your ChatGPT chats even if you delete the conversation.

FULL STORY

Back in December 2023, the New York Times launched a lawsuit against OpenAI
and Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement. The New York Times alleges
that OpenAI had trained its ChatGPT model, which also powers Microsofts
Copilot , by copying and using millions of its articles without permission. 

The lawsuit is still ongoing, and as part of it the New York Times (and other
plaintiffs involved in the case) have made the demand that OpenAI are made to
retain consumer ChatGPT and API customer data indefinitely, much to the ire 
of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who took to X.com to tweet , We have been
thinking recently about the need for something like AI privilege; this really
accelerates the need to have the conversation. IMO talking to an AI should be
like talking to a lawyer or a doctor. I hope society will figure this out
soon.

OpenAI describes the New York Times lawsuit as baseless, and in a lengthy 
post on the OpenAI website titled, How were responding to The New York Times
data demands in order to protect user privacy, OpenAI lays out its approach 
to privacy. 

Brad Lightcap, COO, OpenAI, says that the demand from the NYT fundamentally
conflicts with the privacy commitments we have made to our users. It abandons
long-standing privacy norms and weakens privacy protections. Private
investigations 

As more and more people share intimate details of their lives with AI
chatbots, which are often taking on the role of a therapist , I can 
appreciate the need to be able to keep AI conversations private, however, I
can also see the NYTs point of view that if there is evidence that supports
its claims against OpenAI then it needs to have access to that data without
OpenAI being able to declare it all as too private to share. 

At the moment, a ChatGPT chat is removed from your account immediately when
you delete the conversation, and scheduled for permanent deletion from OpenAI
systems within 30 days. The order would mean that even deleted ChatGPT
conversations would have to be retained by OpenAI. 

As a ChatGPT user myself, Ive always appreciated the ability to be able to
remove conversations entirely. If OpenAI is forced to comply with this
request, then its going to affect pretty much everybody who uses the service,
on either a free, Plus, Pro, or Teams (but not Enterprise or Edu account
holders). 

The order also does not impact API customers who are using Zero Data 
Retention endpoints under OpenAIs ZDR amendment. 

OpenAI has said it has appealed the order to the District Court Judge and 
will inform us when it knows more.

======================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/sam-altman-says-ai
-chats-should-be-as-private-as-talking-to-a-lawyer-or-a-doctor-but-openai-coul
d-soon-be-forced-to-keep-your-chatgpt-conversations-forever

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