09-06-2025
OpenAI Fights Court Order Requiring It to Store Deleted ChatGPT Conversations Indefinitely
OpenAI is appealing a court order requiring it to store deleted ChatGPT conversations "indefinitely."
The court order was issued as part of The New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, where it has been accused, alongside Microsoft, of using the newspaper's articles to train its artificial intelligence models.
In a statement, OpenAI chief operating officer Brad Lightcap described the court order as one that "fundamentally conflicts with the privacy commitments we have made to our users. It abandons long-standing privacy norms and weakens privacy protections."
He added that the company believes that The New York Times has overreached with this court order and that OpenAI will continue to appeal the decision.
According to The Verge, OpenAI in May was forced by the court order to preserve "all output log data that would otherwise be deleted," even if a user requests the deletion of a chat or if privacy laws require OpenAI to delete data.
OpenAI said it filed a motion requesting that the magistrate judge reconsider the preservation order, adding, "Highlighting that indefinite retention of user data breaches industry norms and our own policies."
Products impacted by the court order include ChatGPT Free, Plus, Pro, and Team subscription, or if users use the OpenAI API (application-programming interface) without a Zero Data Retention agreement.
Excluded from this arrangement are customers using ChatGPT Enterprise or ChatGPT Edu.
OpenAI noted that the deleted data will not be automatically shared with The New York Times and that it has been securely stored, accessible only under strict legal protocols.
