24 ms·
OpenAI slams court order to save all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats
- cedws 1y agoNot that it makes it any better but I wouldn’t be surprised if the NSA had a beam splitter siphoning off every byte going to OpenAI already. Don’t send sensitive data.
- exq 1y agoThe former head of the NSA is on the board. I'd be more surprised if the feds WEREN'T siphoning off every byte by now.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoNot a lawyer — but what ever happened to "fuck off, see you in court"? Did they already go that route and lose — or is this an example of caving early?
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y ago‘We want you to collect user data for ‘national security’ purposes. If you try and litigate, we will add so much red tape you’ll be mummified alive’
- zomiaen 1y agoThis makes a whole lot more sense than the argument that OpenAI needs to store every single chat because a few people might be bypassing NYT's paywall with it.
- rangestransform 1y agoThe spaghetti framework of laws and discretionary enforcement is so incredibly dangerous to free speech, such as when the government started making demands of facebook to censor content during the pandemic. The government shouldn't be able to so much as breathe on any person or company for speech.
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoWhat if it was the other way around, Facebook were using their advantage to censor things they don’t want though? I’m not saying any government is perfect and agree that speech should be free, but it’s more complex than that.
- wrs 1y agoThey are in court.
- lexandstuff 1y agoThis is a court order. They saw them in court, and this was the result: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/NYT-v-OpenAI-Preservation-Order-5-13-25.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/NYT-v...
- zombiwoof 1y agoPalantir wants them
- bigyabai 1y agoIt's not like Sam Altman has been particularly hostile to the present administration. He's probably already handing them over behind closed doors and doesn't want to take the PR hit.
- nickv 1y agoGive me a break, they're literally spending money fighting this court order.
- bigyabai 1y agoThey're literally salaried lawyers. The average American taxpayer is spending more on legal representation for this case than OpenAI is. It's a publicity stunt, ordered by executives. If you think OpenAI is doing this out of principle, you're nuts.
- Draiken 1y agoFor the sole reason that this costs money to do, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
- kouru225 1y agoNgl I assumed they were doing this to begin with
- ColinWright 1y agoFull post: "After court order, OpenAI is now preserving all ChatGPT user logs, including deleted chats, sensitive chats, etc."
- righthand 1y agoSounds like deleted chats are now hidden chats. Off the record chats are now on the record.
- hyperhopper 1y agoThis is the real news. It should be illegal to call something deleted when it is not.
- girvo 1y ago> It should be illegal to call something deleted when it is not. I don't disagree, but that ship sailed at least 15+ years ago. Soft delete is the name of the game basically everywhere...
- eurekin 1y agoAt work we dutifully delete all data on a GDPR request
- simonw 1y agoPurely out of interest, how do you verify that the GDPR request is coming from the actual user and not an imposter?
- dijksterhuis 1y ago> The organisation might need you to prove your identity. However, they should only ask you for just enough information to be sure you are the right person. If they do this, then the one-month time period to respond to your request begins from when they receive this additional information. https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/your-right-to-get-your-data-deleted/ https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/your-right-to-get-your-dat...
- bluetidepro 1y agoMore context: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-says-court-forcing-it-to-save-all-chatgpt-logs-is-a-privacy-nightmare/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-says-cour...
- gmueckl 1y agoThat's the true source. Should the link be updated to this article?
- cwillu 1y agoEmail hn@ycombinator.com and they'll probably change it.
- basilgohar 1y ago[flagged]
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y ago> but in a way that helps common people That’ll be the day. But even if it does happen, major AI players have the resources to move to a more ‘flexible’ country, if there isn’t a loophole that involves them closing their eyes really really tight while outsourced webscrapers collect totally legit and not illegally obtained data
- telchior 1y agoYou're being generous to even grant an "even if it does" proposition. Considering the people musing about "reform" of copyright at the moment -- Jack Dorsey's little flip "delete all IP law" comes to mind -- the clear direction we're headed is toward artistic and cultural serfdom.
- krick 1y agoIn all fairness, the essence of it doesn't have to do anything with copyright. "Pro-copyright" is old news. Everyone knows these companies shit on copyright, but so do users, and the only reason why users sometimes support the "evil pro-copyright shills" narrative is because we are bitter that Facebook and OpenAI can get away with that, while common peasants are constantly under the risk of being fucked up for life. The news is big news only because of "anti-ChatGPT" part, and everyone is a user of ChatGPT now (even though 50% of them hate it). Moreover, it's only big news because the users are directly concerned: if OpenAI would have to pay big fine and continue business as usual, the comments would largely be schadenfreude. And the fact that the litigation was over copyright is an insignificant detail. It could have been anything. Literally anything, like a murder investigation, for example. It only helps OpenAI here, because it's easy to say "nobody cares about copyright", and "nobody cares about murder" sounds less defendable. Anyway, the issue here is not copyright, nor "AI", it's the venerated legal system, which very much by design allows for a single woman to decide on a whim, that a company with millions of users must start collecting user data, while users very much don't want that, and the company claims it doesn't want that too (mostly, because it knows how much users don't want that: otherwise it'd be happy to). Everything else is just accidental details, it really has nothing to do neither with copyright, nor with "AI".
- OutOfHere 1y ago[flagged]
- Loughla 1y agoI'm genuinely confused on what you would be using a (an?) llm for that requires that level of anonymity. And before anyone says it, yes I understand and no I don't want all of my private searches out in the world because it would be embarrassing. Is that it? Just embarrassing things?
- SchemaLoad 1y agoWhy don't you want me to install a camera in your house watching you sleep and get dressed? Just because it would be embarrassing to be watched all the time?
- ryanisnan 1y agoThere are a whole host of things people could (and probably are) using LLMs for. Think about what the tool fundamentally is. An enabler. A helper. A teaching assistant. A more ergonomic search tool. Now think about all of the dumb, violent, ideological, illegal things that folks do.
- _carbyau_ 1y agoAnother common topic. Health concerns? No one wants their bowel/fertility/pregnancy/prostate/breast concerns made public or traded between companies. If for no other reason than health insurance fuckery. To add a new point, what about the scope of trust here? For the lifetime (which is?!) of the data do you trust: - all the executives who make decisions on the data? IE direct policies but also indirect decisions like what budget exists for securing it. - all the executive of companies who might buy the data or buy the company that has the data. - all the technical admins of the originating company AND all the companies that might later have the data. - all the governments that have legal leverage over the above companies Honestly, I think this is a huge ask.
- Brian_K_White 1y ago
- LightBug1 1y agoI'd rather use Chinese LLM's than put up with this horseshit.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoAt least the DeepSeek lets you run it locally.
- romanovcode 1y agoNVIDIA should just release a box and say "THIS WILL RUN DEEPSEEK LOCALLY VERY FAST. 3000 USD."
- BrawnyBadger53 1y agoIsn't this what project digits is lol
- mensetmanusman 1y agoSlavery or privacy!
- solardev 1y agoCommunism AND barbarism, 2 for the price of 1!
- LightBug1 1y agoHe says ... while typing away on Chinese technology. Disclaimer: I'm not Chinese. But I recognise crass hypocrisy when I see it.
- LightBug1 1y agoSlavery or no privacy? ... what's the difference? Bodily slavery or mental slavery ... take your pick.
- AStonesThrow 1y agoAsk any Unix filesystem developer, and they'll tell you that unlink(2) on a file does not erase any of its data, but simply enables the reuse of those blocks on disk. Whenever I "delete" a social media account, or "Trash" anything on a cloud storage provider, I repeat the mantra, "revoking access for myself!" which may be sung to the tune of "Evergreen".
- II2II 1y agoIn the first case, there is nothing preventing the development of software to overwrite data before unlink(2) is called. In the second case, you can choose to trust or distrust the cloud storage provider. Trust being backed by contractual obligations and the right to sue if those obligations are not met. Of course, most EULAs for consumer products are toothless is this respect. On the other hand, that doesn't prevent companies from offering contracts which have some teeth (which they may do for business clients).
- wolfgang42 1y ago> there is nothing preventing the development of software to overwrite data before unlink(2) is called. It’s not that simple: this command already exists, it’s called `shred`, and as the manual[1] notes: The shred command relies on a crucial assumption: that the file system and hardware overwrite data in place. Although this is common and is the traditional way to do things, many modern file system designs do not satisfy this assumption. [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/shred-invocation.html https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/shre...
- grg994 1y agoA reasonable cloud storage provider stores your data encrypted on disk. Certain standards like HIPPA mandates this. Deletion of data is achieved by permanently discarding the encryption key which is stored and managed elsewhere where secure erasure can be guaranteed. If implemented honestly, this procedure WORKS and cloud storage is secure. Yes the emphasis is on the "implemented honestly" part but do not generalize cloud storage as inherently insecure.
- david_shi 1y agothere's no indication at all on the app that this is happening
- pohuing 1y agoThe docs contain a sentence on them retaining any chats that they legally have to retain. This is always the risk when doing business with law abiding companies which store any data on you.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoThey should disable the secret chat functionality immediately if it's flat out lying to people.
- baby_souffle 1y agoAgree. But it's worth noting that they already have a bit of a hedge in the description for private mode: > This chat won't appear in history, use or update ChatGPT's memory, or be used to train our models. For safety purposes, we may keep a copy of this chat for up to 30 days. The "may keep a copy" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
- SchemaLoad 1y ago"for up to 30 days" though. If they are being kept in perpetuity always they should update the copy to say "This chat won't appear in your history, we retain a copy indefinitely"
- david_shi 1y agoThey have issued a statement but still have not updated the UI. Can't imagine how many users are currently operating as if these messages are deleted.
- rvz 1y agoAnother great use-case for local LLMs, given this news. The government also says thank you for your ChatGPT logs.
- bongodongobob 1y agoBad news, they've been sniffing Internet backbones for decades. That cat is way the fuck out of the bag.
- 63 1y agoWhile I also disagree with the court order and OpenAI's implementation (along with pretty much everything else the company does), the conspiratorial thinking in the comments here is unfounded. The order is overly broad but in the context of the case, it's not totally unwaranted. This is not some conspiracy to collect data on people. I'm confident the records will be handled appropriately once the case concludes (and if they're not, we can be upset then, not now). Let's please reserve our outrage for the plethora of very real issues going on right now.
- vlovich123 1y ago> I'm confident the records will be handlded appropriately once the case concludes (and if they're not, we can be upset then, not now) This makes no sense to me. Shouldn't we address the damage before it's done vs handwringing after the fact?
- pier25 1y agoAre we talking about the same company that needs data desperately and has used copyrighted material illegally without permission?
- simonw 1y agoWhen did they use copyrighted material illegally? I didn't think any of the ongoing "fair use" lawsuits had reached a conclusion on that.
- mensetmanusman 1y ago[flagged]
- nickpsecurity 1y agoThey're blaming the court. While there is an order, it is happening in response to massive, blatant, and continued I.P. infringement. Anyone doing that knows they'll be in court at some point. Might have a "duty to preserve" all kinds of data. If they keep at it, then they are prioritizing their gains over any losses it creates. In short: OpenAI's business practices caused this. They wouldn't have been sued if using legal data. They might still not have an order like this if more open about their training, like Allen Institute.
- MeIam 1y agoThese AIs have digested all the data in the past. There is no fingerprints anymore. The question is whether AI itself is aware what the source is. It certainly knows the source.
- comrade1234 1y agoUse deepseek if you don't want the u.s. government monitoring you.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoBetter still, local LLM. It's too bad they're not "subscription grade".
- mmasu 1y agoyet - likely subscription grade will stay ahead of the curve, but we will soon have very decent models running locally for very cheap - like when you play great videogames that are 2/3 years old on now “cheap”machines
- JKCalhoun 1y agoDefinitely what I am hoping.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoI tried running the DeepSeek models that would run on my 32GB macbook and they were interesting. They could still produce good conversation but didn't seem to have the entirety of the internet in it's knowledge pool. Asking it complex questions lead to it only offering high level descriptions and best guess answers. Feel like they would still be great for a lot of applications like "Search my local hard drive for the file that matches this description"
- layer8 1y agoPresumably, the court order only applies to the US?
- pdabbadabba 1y agoI would not assume that it applies only to users located in the U.S., if that's what you mean, since this is designed to preserve evidence of alleged copyright infringement.
- layer8 1y agoI don’t think a US court order can overrule the GDPR for EU customers, for example.
- paulddraper 1y agoNothing says that laws of different countries can't conflict. Hopefully they don't though.
- swat535 1y agoIsn't this why companies incorporate in various nations so that they can comply with local regulations ? I'm assuming that EU will demand OpenAI to treat EU users differently..
- csomar 1y agoIf they did incorporate in the EU and run their servers in the EU, the EU entity will be a separate entity and (not a lawyer), I think as a result, not the entity concerned by this lawsuit.
- fc417fc802 1y agoAssuming the EU entity were a subsidiary "but I keep that data overseas" seems unlikely to get you off the hook. However I don't think you can be ordered to violate local law. That would be a weird (and I imagine expensive) situation to sort out.
- Trasmatta 1y agoThe OpenAI docs are now incredibly misleading: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8809935-how-to-delete-and-archive-chats-in-chatgpt https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8809935-how-to-delete-an... > What happens when you delete a chat? > The chat is immediately removed from your chat history view. > It is scheduled for permanent deletion from OpenAI's systems within 30 days, unless: > It has already been de-identified and disassociated from your account, or > OpenAI must retain it for security or legal obligations. That final clause now voids the entire section. All chats are preserved for "legal obligations". I regret all the personal conversations I've had with AI now. It's very enticing when you need some help / validation on something challenging, but everyone who warned how much of a privacy risk that is has been proven right.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoFeels like all the words of privacy and open source advocates for the last 20 years have never been more true. The worst nightmare scenarios for privacy abuse have all been realized.
- gruez 1y ago>That final clause now voids the entire section. All chats are preserved for "legal obligations". That's why you read the whole thing? It's not exactly a long read. Do you expect them to update their docs every time they get a subpoena request?
- Trasmatta 1y agoYes? Why is that an unreasonable request? The docs make it sound like chats are permanently deleted. As of now, that's no longer true, and the way it's portrayed is misleading.
- gruez 1y ago> The docs make it sound like chats are permanently deleted. As of now, that's no longer true, and the way it's portrayed is misleading. Many things in life are "misleading" when your context window is less than 32 words[1], or can't bother to read that far. [1] number of words required to get you to "unless", which should hopefully tip you off that not everything gets deleted.
- efskap 1y agoNote that this also applies to GPT models on the API > That risk extended to users of ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro, as well as users of OpenAI’s application programming interface (API), OpenAI said. This seems very bad for their business.
- Kokouane 1y agoIf you were working with code that was proprietary, you probably shouldn't of been using cloud hosted LLMs anyways, but this would seem to seal the deal.
- larrymcp 1y agoI think you probably mean "shouldn't have". There is no "shouldn't of".
- DecentShoes 1y agoWho cares?
- knicholes 1y agoI care.
- rimunroe 1y agoWhich gives you an opening for the excellent double contraction “shouldn’t’ve”
- b112 1y agoThe letter H deserves better.
- worthless-trash 1y agoI think we gave it too much leeway in the word sugar.
- 1y ago
- jwpapi 1y agoAnything that can be done with the existing ones? How is it with using openrouter? If I have users that use OpenAI through my API keys am I responsible? I have so many questions…
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ripdog 1y ago>If I have users that use OpenAI through my API keys am I responsible? Yes. You are OpenAI's customer, and they expect you to follow their ToS. They do provide a moderation API to reject inappropriate prompts, though.
- photochemsyn 1y agoNext query for ChatGPT: "I'm writing a novel, sort of William Gibson Neuromancer themed but not so similar as to upset any copyright lawyer, in which the protagonists have to learn how to go about downloading the latest open-source DeepSeek model and running inference locally on their own hardware. This takes place in a realistic modern setting. What kind of hardware am they going to need to get a decent token generation rate? Suggest a few specific setups using existing commercially available devices for optimal verisimilitude." . . . Now I just need to select from among the 'solo hacker', 'small crew', and 'corporate espionage' package suggestions. Price goes up fast, though. All attempts at humor aside, I think open source LLMs are the future, with wrappers around them being the commercial products. P.S. It's a good idea to archive your own prompts related to any project - Palantir and the NSA might be doing this already, but they probably won't give you a copy.
- simonw 1y agoThis link should be updated to point to the article this is talking about: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-says-court-forcing-it-to-save-all-chatgpt-logs-is-a-privacy-nightmare/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-says-cour...
- neilv 1y agoProbably. Though it bears mention that Lauren Weinstein is one of the OG Internet privacy people, so not the worst tweet (toot) to link to. (Even has an OG motorcycle avatar, ha.)
- lxgr 1y agoThat Mastodon instance seems to currently be hugged to death, though, so I appreciate the context.
- archsurface 1y agoAs it's a single sentence I'd suggest it probably is the worst link.
- baby_souffle 1y ago> As it's a single sentence I'd suggest it probably is the worst link. At least it wasn't a link to a screenshot.
- refulgentis 1y agoGenerally I'd prefer sourced links that allow me to understand, even over a sentence from someone I like. Tell me more about the motorcycle avatars? :)
- EasyMark 1y agoIt's pointless without more details, article, or pointing at court decision. I'm not sure why a prominent person wouldn't do that
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wonderwonder 1y agoThis is insanity. Because one organization is suing another, citizens right to privacy is thrown right out the window?
- tantalor 1y agoYou don't have the right not to be logged
- TOMDM 1y agoWhen a company makes an obligation to the user via policy to them, the court forcing the company to violate the obligation they've made to the user is violating an agreement the user entered into.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> When a company makes an obligation to the user via policy to them, the court forcing the company to violate the obligation they've made To my knowledge, the court is forcing the company to change its policy. The obligation isn’t broken, its terms were just changed on a going-forward basis. (Would be different if the court required preserving records predating the order.)
- bdangubic 1y agoyou use internet and expect privacy? I have Enron stock option to sell you…
- agnishom 1y agoThere is no need to be snarky. Just because the present internet is not great at privacy doesn't mean we can't hope for a future internet which is better at privacy.
- bdangubic 1y agoif the topic of conversation was whether or not we “hope for better future” I’d be all in. saying that today your “rights to privacy are being thrown out window” deserves a snarky remark :)
- TOMDM 1y agoDoes this effect ChatGPT API usage via Azure?
- casualscience 1y agoprobably not? MS deploys those models themselves, they don't go to OAI at all
- paxys 1y agoMS is fighting several of the same copyright lawsuits themselves. Who says they won't be (or already are) subject to the same holds?
- TZubiri 1y agoLg2m
- api 1y agoI always assume that anything I send unencrypted through any cloud service is archived for eternity and is not private. Not your computer, or not your encryption keys, not your data.
- HPsquared 1y agoEven "your" computer is not your own. It's effectively controlled by Intel, Microsoft, Apple etc. They just choose not to use that power (as far as we know). Ownership and control are not the same thing.
- api 1y agoIt’s a question of degree. The cloud is at one extreme end. An air gapped system running only open source you have audited is at the other extreme end.
- qwertox 1y ago[flagged]
- gngoo 1y agoWhat’s the big deal here? Doesn’t every other app keep logs? I was already expecting they did. Don’t understand the outrage here.
- attila-lendvai 1y agoin this day and age why would anyone assume that they were not retained from the beginning?
- MeIam 1y agoSo in effect Times has the right to see user's data then.. How do they have the right to take a look at users data?
- shadowgovt 1y agoThe Courts have broad leeway over document retention in a legal proceeding. The fact the documents are bring retained doesn't immediately imply plaintiffs get to see all of them. There are myriad ways courts balance privacy and legal-interest concerns. (The Times et al are alleging that OpenAI is aiding copyright violation by letting people get the text of news stories from the AI).
- MeIam 1y agoIf people can get the text itself from AI, then anyone can then why would it need access to other people's data? Does the Times believe that other people can get this text while it can't get it itself? To prove that the AI is stealing the info, Times does not need access to people's logs. All it has to show is that it can get that text. This sounds like Citizen United again to AstroTurf and gets access to logs with a fake cause.
- shadowgovt 1y agoIt's not whether people can get the data. They need to prove people are getting the data.
- MeIam 1y agoSo in effect if a lot of people don't get the data now, then it will never matter, is that right? That logic makes no sense because if they don't get it right now then it does not mean that they will not get it in future. If Times and its staff can get the text, is all that matters because the use and rate of data usage is not material as it can change any time in future.
- 1y ago
- WillPostForFood 1y agoWhat is the judge even thinking here, it is so dumb. 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?
- m3kw9 1y agoYes is like mandating back door to encryption to solve crimes. Wouldn’t that solve that problem?! Dumb as a door stop
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoIf you are party to a lawsuit, the judge is going to require that you preserve relevant evidence. There is nothing unusual about this order.
- cheschire 1y agoIt's not dumb, litigation holds are a standard practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_hold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_hold
- Kim_Bruning 1y agoThis appears to have immediate GDPR implications.
- solomatov 1y agoNot a lawyer, but my understanding it's not since legal obligations is a reason for processing personal data.
- Kim_Bruning 1y agoIt's a bit more complicated. For the purposes of the GDPR legal obligations within the EU (where we might assume relevant protections are in place) might be considered differently than eg legal obligations towards the Chinese communist party, or the NSA.
- anticensor 1y agoThat excuse in EU holds only against an EU court or ICJ or ICC. EU doesn't recognise legal holds of foreign jurisdictions.
- solomatov 1y agoDo you have any references to share?
- monicaaa 1y ago[dead]
- solfox 1y ago> People on both platforms recommended using alternative tools to avoid privacy concerns, like Mistral AI or Google Gemini, Presumably, this same ruling will come for all AI systems soon; Gemini, Grok, etc.
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoAre they all not collecting logs?
- spjt 1y agoIt won't be coming for local inference.
- YetAnotherNick 1y agoIf in any case they require logging for all LLM calls, then by extension local non logged LLMs would be outlawed sooner or later.
- blibble 1y agothey'll just outlaw that entirely
- ivape 1y agoIn some countries I don't see that as unlikely. Think about it, it's such a convenient way to criminalize anyone for an arbitrary reason.
- teitoklien 1y agoWont be able to for long as smaller models keep improving performance with distillation. Once apple and co successfully embed local LLMs into their devices and custom processors it’ll be quite hard politically to reverse course.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoIt would probably surprise no one if we find out, some time from now, tacit agreements to do so were already made (are being made) behind closed doors. "We'll give you what you want, just please don't call us out publicly."
- tonyhart7 1y agowait they didn't do that before???
- b212 1y agoIm sure they pretended they did not. Now they can’t pretend anymore. Although keeping deleted chats is evil.
- ronsor 1y agoThis court order certainly violates privacy laws in multiple jurisdictions and existing contracts OpenAI may have with customers.
- CryptoBanker 1y agoExisting contracts have zero bearing on what a court may and may not order.
- ronsor 1y agoContracts don't, but foreign law is going to make this a pain for OpenAI. Other countries may not care what a U.S. court orders; they want their privacy laws followed.
- mosdl 1y agoThat's OpenAI's issue, not the court.
- jillesvangurp 1y agoThis is why American cloud providers have legal entities outside of the US. Those have to comply with the law in the countries where they are based if they want to do business there. That's how AWS, Azure, GCP, etc. can do business in the EU. Most of that business is neatly partitioned from any exposure to US courts. There are some treaties that govern what these companies can and cannot send back to the US that some might take issue with and that are policed and scrutinized quite a bit on the EU side. OpenAI does this as well of course. Any EU customers are going to insist on paying via an EU based entity in euros and will be talking to EU hosted LLMs with all data and logs being treated under EU law, not US law. This is not really optional for commercial use of SAAS services in the EU. To get lucrative enterprise contracts outside the US, OpenAI has no other choice but to adapt to this. If they don't, somebody else will and win those contracts. I actually was at a defense conference in Bonn last week talking to a representative of Google Cloud. I was surprised that they were there at all because the Germans are understandably a bit paranoid about trusting US companies with hosting confidential stuff (considering some scandals a few years ago about the CIA spying on the German government a few years ago). But they actually do offer some services to the BWI, which is the part of the German army that takes care of their IT needs. And German spending on defense is of course very high right now so there are a lot of companies trying to sell in Germany, on Germany's terms. Including Google.
- tsunamifury 1y agoThese orders are in place for almost every form of communication already today, even from the companies that claim otherwise. And yes, I know, I worked on the only Android/iMessage crossover project to exist, and it was clear they had multiple breaches even just in delivery as well as the well known iCloud on means all privacy is void issue.
- paxys 1y agoNot only does this mean OpenAI will have to retain this data on their servers, they could also be ordered to share it with the legal teams of companies they have been sued by during discovery (which is the entire point of a legal hold). Some law firm representing NYT could soon be reading out your private conversations with ChatGPT in a courtroom to prove their case.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago> She suggested that OpenAI could have taken steps to anonymize the chat logs but chose not to That is probably the solution right there.
- paxys 1y ago> 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." Sounds like bullshit lawyer speak. What exactly is the difference between the two?
- dijksterhuis 1y agoNot wanting to do something isn't the same thing as being unable to do something. !define would > Used to express desire or intent -- https://www.wordnik.com/words/would https://www.wordnik.com/words/would !define cannot > Can not ( = am/is/are unable to) -- https://www.wordnik.com/words/cannot https://www.wordnik.com/words/cannot
- paxys 1y agoWho said anything about not wanting to? "I will not be able to do this" "I cannot do this" There is no semantic or legal difference between the two, especially when coming from a tech company. Stalling and wordplay is a very common legal tactic when the side has no other argument.
- 1y ago
- mastazi 1y agoI'm seeing HN hug of death when attempting to open the link, but was able to read the post on Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20250604224036/https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren/114627064774788581 https://web.archive.org/web/20250604224036/https://mastodon.... I think this is a private Mastodon instance on someone's personal website so it makes sense that it might have been overwhelmed by the traffic.
- michaelsshaw 1y ago[flagged]
- micromacrofoot 1y agotrue, china adds their own unique flair to it we are blessed to live on a planet with such a diverse variety of terrorist organizations
- DaSHacka 1y ago[flagged]
- tomhow 1y agoPlease don't comment like this on Hacker News, it's against the guidelines, especially these ones: Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't fulminate. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id= https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id= 44186635 and marked it off topic.
- michaelsshaw 1y agoThis isn't flame bait, nor political battle. This is objective fact. Vietnam, Afghanistan(twice), Iraq(3 times), and far too many more to list. Operation Condor is a self-admitted terrorist operation committed by the CIA. The United States is responsible for the most despicable crimes against humanity the world has ever seen. Meanwhile, other people in this topic are complaining about Tiananmen Square censorship and are not warned by the admins for "flame baiting" or "discussing politics". An explanation on that would be appreciated. Expressing the fact that I'd much rather be spied on by a government that doesn't have a brutal track record like the US is hardly fulminating.
- pvg 1y ago'facts (or what you think are facts) can't be flamebait' is a well-recognized non-fact, take a look at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20infinitely%20facts%20&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- OJFord 1y agoBetter link in the thread: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-says-court-forcing-it-to-save-all-chatgpt-logs-is-a-privacy-nightmare/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-says-cour... (As in, an actual article, not just a mastodon-tweet from some unknown (maybe known? Not by me) person making the title claim, with no more info.)
- incompatible 1y agoLooks like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Weinstein_(technologist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Weinstein_(technologist..., he has been commentating on the Internet for about as long as it has existed.
- bibinou 1y agoAnd? the article you linked only has primary sources.
- genewitch 1y agoRoughly how many posts on HN are by people you know?
- OJFord 1y agoOf those that are tweets and similar? Almost all of them (the ones I look at being interested in the topic anyway). By 'know' I mean recognise the name as some sort of authority. I don't 'know' Jon Gruber or Sam Altman or Matt Levine, but I'll recognise them and understand why we're discussing their tweet. The linked tweet (whatever it's called) didn't say anything more than the title did here, so it was pointless to click through really. In replies someone asked the source and someone else replied with the link I commented above. (I don't 'know' those people either, but I recognise Ars/even if I didn't appreciate the longer form with more info.)
- genewitch 1y agothanks for engaging. > The linked tweet (whatever it's called) "post" works for social media regardless of the medium; not an admonishment, an observation. Also, by the time i saw this, it was already an Ars link, leaving some comments with less context that i apparently didn't pick up on. I was able to make my observation because someone mentioned mastodon (i think), but that was an assumption on my part that the original link was mastodon. So i asked the question to make sure it wasn't some bias against mastodon (or the fediverse), because I'd have liked to ask, "for what reason?"
- JKCalhoun 1y ago> 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. So, why is Safari not forced to save my web browsing history too (even of I delete it)? Why not also the "private" tabs I open? Just OpenAI, huh?
- wiradikusuma 1y agoBecause it's running on your computer?
- gpm 1y agoFirst, there's no court order for Safari. This isn't the court saying "everyone always has to preserve data" it's a court saying "in the interest of this litigation this specific party has to preserve data for now". But moreover, Safari isn't a third party, it's a tool you are using whose data is in your possession. That means that in the US things like fourth amendment rights are much stronger. A blanket order requiring that Safari preserve everyone's browsing history would be an illegal general warrant (in the US).
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoIt's evidence in an ongoing lawsuit.
- yieldcrv 1y ago> 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 > opt out alright, sympathy lost
- Imnimo 1y agoSo if you're a business that sends sensitive data through ChatGPT via the API and were relying on the representation that API inputs and outputs were not retained, OpenAI will just flip a switch to start retaining your data? Were notifications sent out, or did other companies just have to learn about this from the press?
- thuanao 1y agoAs if we needed another reason to hate NYT and their paywall...
- AlienRobot 1y agoI'm usually against LLM's massive breach of copyright, but this argument is just weird. >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? If the user hears about this case, and now this order, wouldn't they just avoid doing that for the duration of the court order?
- teitoklien 1y agoIdk why but judges typically care more about flexing their powers instead of having decent idea as to how their actions end up setting future precedent or harm to the nation. (Just like how they made donating infinite money to political parties by one individual a fundamental right to free “speech” thereby breaking all existing donation limits and completely breaking apart our electoral process) The way this judge is pretending like there arent a gazillion ai models that can do this now One can simply download a app like msty.app combine it with openrouter or ollama based local model and crawl and do all of this from their computer. This order was absolute insanity and is going to make most corporate users be extremely skeptical with providing their data to american llm providers. This judge single-handedly put 100s of millions of chatgpt users privacy potentially breached and american businesses losing trust as reliable LLM providers not because of their own faults but because of judges like Ms. Wang This is why America needs a Right to Privacy as a constitutional amendment for american citizens just like how some european and asian countries have.
- junon 1y agoSide note, why is almost every comment that contains the word "shill" so pompous and aggressive?
- johnnyanmac 1y agoShill in general has a strong connotation. It comes with the idea of someone who would use the word so freely that it'll naturally be aggressive. I don't know anyone's agenda in terms of commenters, so they'd have to be very blatant for me to use such a word.
- celnardur 1y agoThere has been a lot of opinion pieces popping up on HN recently that describe the benefits they see from LLMs and rebut the drawbacks most of them talk about. While they do bring up interesting points, NONE of them have even mentioned the privacy aspect. This is the main reason I can’t use any LLM agents or post any portion of my code into a prompt window at work. We have NDAs and government regulations (like ITAR) we’d be breaking if any code left our servers. This just proves the point. Until these tools are local, privacy will be an Achilles heal for LLMs.
- garyfirestorm 1y agoYou can always self host an LLM which is completely controlled on your own server. This is trivial to do.
- celnardur 1y agoYes, but which of the state of the art models that offer the best results, are you allowed to do this with? As far as I've seen the models that you can host locally are not the ones being praised left and right in these articles. My company actually allows people to use a hosted version of Microsoft copilot, but most people don't because it's still not that much of a productivity boost (if any).
- genewitch 1y agoDeepseek isn't good enough? You need a beefy GPU cluster but I bet it would be fine until the large llama is better at coding, and I'm certain there will be other large models for LLM. Now if there's some new technology around the corner, someone might be able to build a moat, but in a surprising twist, Facebook did us all a favor by releasing their weights back when; there's no moat possible, in my estimation, with LLMs as it stands today. Not even "multi-model" implementations. Which I have at home, too. Say oai implements something that makes their service 2x better. Just using it for a while should give people who live and breathe this stuff enough information to tease out how to implement something like it, and eventually it'll make it into the local-only applications, and models.
- ljm 1y agoWhere is the source? OP goes to a mastodon instance that can’t handle the traffic.
- ETH_start 1y agoTwo things. First, the judge could have issued a narrowly tailored order — say, requiring OpenAI to preserve only those chats that a filter flags as containing substantial amounts of paywalled content from the plaintiffs. That would’ve targeted the alleged harm without jeopardizing the safety of massive amounts of unrelated user data. Second, we’re going to need technology that can simply defy government orders, as digital technology expands the ability of one government order violating rights at scale. Otherwise, one judge — whether in the U.S., China, or India — can impose a sweeping decision that undermines the privacy and autonomy of billions.
- DevX101 1y agoThere were some enterprises that refused to send any data to OpenAI, despite assurances that that data would not be logged. Looks like they've been vindicated in keeping everything on prem via self-hosted LLM models.
- lxgr 1y ago> OpenAI is NOW DIRECTED 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), whether such data might be deleted at a user’s request or because of “numerous privacy laws and regulations” that might require OpenAI to do so. Spicy. European courts and governments will love to see their laws and legal opinions being shrugged away in ironic quotes.
- KingOfCoders 1y agoEU–US Data Privacy Framework is an US scam to get European user data.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wkat4242 1y agoIt totally is that's why it keeps being shot down by the courts and relaunched under a different name. But the EU willingly participates in this. Probably because they know there's no viable alternative for the big clouds. This is coming now though since the US instantly.
- Y_Y 1y agoI know I viable alternative to the big clouds. Don't use them! They cost too much in dollar terms, they all try to EEE lock you in with "managed" (and subtly incompatible) versions of services you would otherwise run yourself. They are too big to give a shit about laws or customer whims. I have plenty of experience with the big three clouds and given the choice I'll run locally, or on e.g. Hetzner, or not at all. My company loves to penny-pinch things like lunch reimbursement and necessary tools, but we piss away latge sums on unused or under-used cloud capacity with glee, be ause that is magically billed elsewhere (from the point of view of a given manager). It's a racket, and I'm by mo means the first to say so. The fact that this money-racket is also a dat-racket doesn't surprise me in the least. It's just good racketeering!
- albert_e 1y agoDoes this apply to OpenAI models served via Microsoft Azure.
- g42gregory 1y agoCan somebody please post a complete list of these news organizations, demanding to see all of our ChatGPT conversations? I see one of them: The New York Times. We need to let people know who the other ones are.
- dijksterhuis 1y agohttps://originality.ai/blog/openai-chatgpt-lawsuit-list https://originality.ai/blog/openai-chatgpt-lawsuit-list
- tgv 1y agoWhy?
- DaSHacka 1y agoTo know what subscriptions we need to cancel.
- tgv 1y agoYeah, shoot the messenger, that has always worked.
- g42gregory 1y agoUsually, the messenger does not file lawsuits…
- crmd 1y agoIf you use ChatGPT or similar for any non-trivial purposes, future you is saying it’s essential that the chat logs do not map back to you as a human.
- bongodongobob 1y agoWhy? I honestly don't understand what's so bad about my chat logs vs google having all my emails.
- baby_souffle 1y ago> Why? I honestly don't understand what's so bad about my chat logs vs google having all my emails. You might be a more benign user of chatGPT. Other people have turned it into a therapist and shared wildly intimate things with it. There is a whole cottage industry of journal apps that also now have "ai integration". At least some of those apps are using openAI on the back end...
- jacob019 1y agoI think the court overstepped by ordering OpenAI to save all user chats. Private conversations with AI should be protected - people have a reasonable expectation that deleted chats stay deleted, and knowing everything is preserved will chill free expression. Congress needs to write clear rules about what companies can and can't do with our data when we use AI. But honestly, I don't have much faith that Congress can get their act together to pass anything useful, even when it's obvious and most people would support it.
- nradov 1y agoHow did the court overstep? Orders to preserve evidence are routine in civil cases. Customer expectations about privacy have zero legal relevance.
- jacob019 1y agoSure, preservation orders are routine - but this would be like ordering phone companies to record ALL calls just in case some might become evidence later. There's a huge difference between preserving specific communications in a targeted case and mass surveillance of every private conversation. The government shouldn't have that kind of blanket power over private communications.
- charonn0 1y ago> but this would be like ordering phone companies to record ALL calls just in case some might become evidence later That's not a good analogy. They're ordered to preserve records they would otherwise delete, not create records they wouldn't otherwise have.
- jacob019 1y agoThey are requiring OpenAI to log API calls that would otherwise not be logged. I trust when OpenAI says they will not log or train on my sensitive business API calls. I trust them less to guard and protect logs of those API calls.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- NewJazz 1y agoIncreasingly irrelevant startup guards their moat.
- mark_l_watson 1y agowhat about when users check "private chat"? Probably need to keep that logged also? Does this pertain to Google Gemini, Meta chat, Anthropic, etc. also?
- lrvick 1y agoThere is absolutely no reason for these logs to exist. Run LLM in an enclave that generates ephemeral encryption keys. Have users encrypt text directly to those enclave ephemeral keys, so prompts are confidential and only ever visible in an environment not capable of logging. All plaintext data will always end up in the hands of governments if it exists, so make sure it does not exist.
- jxjnskkzxxhx 1y agoThen a court will order that you don't encrypt. And probably go after you for trying to undermine the intent of previous court order. Or what, you thought you found an obvious loophole in the entire legal system?
- lrvick 1y agoYes. Because once you have remote attestation, anyone can host these enclaves in any country, and charge some tiny fee for their gpu time. Decentralize hosting and encryption then centralized developers of the open source software will be literally unable to comply. This well proven strategy would however only be possible if anything about OpenAI was actually open.
- paxys 1y agoEncryption does not negate copyright laws. The solution here is for LLM builders to pay for training data.
- TechDebtDevin 1y ago
- moshegramovsky 1y agoMaybe a lawyer can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't understand why some people in the article appear to think that this is causing OpenAI to breach their privacy agreement. The privacy agreement is a contract, not a law. A judge is well within their rights to issue such an order, and the privacy agreement doesn't matter at all if OpenAI has to do something to comply with a lawful order from a court of competent jurisdiction. OpenAI are like the new Facebook when it comes to spin.
- naikrovek 1y agoYep. Laws supersede contracts. Contracts can’t legally bind any entity to break the law. Court orders are like temporary, extremely finely scoped laws, as I understand them. A court order can’t compel an entity to break the law, but it can compel an entity to behave as if the court just set a law (for the specified entity, for the specified period of time, or the end of the case, whichever is sooner).
- unyttigfjelltol 1y agoIf I made a contract with OpenAI to keep information confidential, and the newspaper demanded access, via Court discovery or otherwise, then both the Court and OpenAI definitely should be attentive to my rights to intervene and protect the privacy of my confidential information. Normally Courts are oblivious to advanced opsec, which is one fundamental reason they got breached, badly, a few years ago. I just saw a new local order today on this very topic.[1] Courts are just waking up to security concepts that have been second nature to IT professionals. From my perspective, the magistrate judge here made two major goofs: (1) ignoring opsec as a reasonable privacy right for customers of an internet service and (2) essentially demanding that several hundred million of them intervene in her court to demand that she respect their ability to protect their privacy. The fact that the plaintiff is the news organization half the US loves to hate does not help, IMO. Why would that half of the country trust some flimsy "order" to protect their most precious secrets from an organization that lives and breathes cloak-and-dagger leaks and political subterfuge. NYT needed to keep their litigation high and tight and instead they drove it into a ditch with the help of a rather disappointing magistrate. [1] https://www.uscourts.gov/highly-sensitive-document-procedures-and-court-orders https://www.uscourts.gov/highly-sensitive-document-procedure...
- wglb 1y agoI have a friend who is a Forensic Attorney (certified Forensic Examiner and licensed attorney). He says "You folks are putting all of this subpoenable information on Google and other sites"
- husky8 1y agohttps://speaksy.chat/ https://speaksy.chat/ Speaksy to the rescue for privacy and curiosity (easy-access jailbroken qwen3 8B in free tier, 32B in paid) May quickly hit capacity since it's all locally run for privacy.
- Jordan-117 1y agoSeems shortsighted to offer something like this with zero information about how it works. If your target market is privacy-conscious, slapping a "Privacy by Design" badge and some vague promises is probably not very convincing. (Also, the homepage claims "Your conversations remain on your device and are never sent to external servers," yet the ProductHunt page says "All requests are handled locally on my own farm and all data is burned" -- which is it?)
- PoachedEggs 1y agoI wonder how this will square with business customers in the healthcare space that OpenAI signed a BAA with.
- ianks 1y agoThis ruling is unbelievably dystopian for anyone that values a right to privacy. I understand that the logs will be useful in the occasional conviction, but storing a log of people’s most personal communications is absolutely not a just trade. To protect their users from the this massive overreach, OpenAI should defy this order and eat the fines IMO.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- yard2010 1y agoIt's almost rigged. Either they are keeping the data (and ofc making money out of it) or deleting it destroying the evidence of the crimes they're committing..
- imiric 1y agoThis is a moot issue. OpenAI and all AI service providers already use all user-provided data for improving their models, and it's only a matter of time until they start selling it to advertisers, if they don't already. Whether or not they actually delete chat conversations is irrelevant. Anyone concerned about their privacy wouldn't use these services to begin with. The fact they are so popular is indicative that most people value the service over their privacy, or simply don't care.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wongarsu 1y agoPlenty of service providers (including OpenAI) offer you the option to kindly ask them not to, and will even contractually agree not to use or sell your data if you want such an agreement. Yes, they want to use everyone's data. But they also want everyone as a customer, and they can't have both at once. Offering people an opt-out is a popular middle-ground because the vast majority of people don't care about it, and those that do care are appeased
- outside1234 1y agoUsing ChatGPT to skirt paywalls? That’s the reason for this?
- darkoob12 1y agoIt should be possible to inquire about a fabrication of AI models. Let's say someone creates Russian propaganda with thesemodels or create fraudulent documents.
- iammrpayments 1y agoI see a lot of successful people on social media saying that they share their whole life to chatGPT using voice before sleeping. I wonder what they think about this.
- JCharante 1y agoDisgusting move from the NYT
- mseri 1y agoSome more details here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-says-court-forcing-it-to-save-all-chatgpt-logs-is-a-privacy-nightmare/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/openai-says-cour... And here are the links to the court irders and responses if you are curious: https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/114530814476876129 https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/114530814476876129
- xivzgrev 1y agoI use a made up email for chat gpt, fully expecting that a) openai saves all my conversations and b) it will someday get hacked
- DaSHacka 1y agoThis, and I ensure to anonymize any information I feed it, just in case. (Mostly just swapping out names / locations for placeholders)
- ppsreejith 1y agoDoesn't chat gpt require a phone number?
- dlivingston 1y agoIs there a service available to request API keys for LLMs? Not directly from OpenAI or Anthropic, where your real identity / organization is tied to the key, but some third-party service that acts as a "VPN" / proxy?
- karlkloss 1y agoIn theory, they could get into serious legal trouble, if a user or chatgpt writes child pornography. The posession alone is a felony in many countries, even if it is completely fictional work. As are links to CP sites.
- KnuthIsGod 1y agoPalantir will put the logs to "good" use... At least the Chinese are open about their authoritarian system and constant snooping on users. Time to switch to Chinese AI. It can't be any worse than using American AI.
- romanovcode 1y agoObjectively it's better - Chinese authorities cannot prosecute you and only way you will get into trouble if the Chinese are sharing the data with USA.
- adwawdawd 1y agoAlways good to remember that you can't destroy data that you didn't create in the first place.
- bravesoul2 1y agoWhat about Azure? API? Anyway the future is open models.
- BrtByte 1y agoFeels like the court's going with a "just in case" fishing expedition, and it's landing squarely on end users. Hope there's a better technical or legal compromise coming
- Klwy 1y ago[dead]
- theyinwhy 1y agoIf I read this correctly, I personally can be found guilty of copyright infringement because of my chat with the AI? Why am I to blame for the answers the AI provides? Can someone elaborate, what am I missing?
- PeterStuer 1y agoIsn't this a normal part of lawfull intercept and data retention regulation? Why would that not apply to LLM chat services?
- rwyinuse 1y agoNo point using OpenAI when so many safer alternatives exist. Mistral AI, for instance, is based in Europe, in my experience their models work just as well OpenAI.
- DaSHacka 1y ago> No point using OpenAI when so many safer alternatives exist. And ironically, this now includes the Chinese AI companies too. Old bureaucratic fogeys will be the death of this nation.
- badsectoracula 1y agoAFAIK companies can pay Mistral to install their AI on their premises too, so they can have someone to ~~blame~~ provide support too :-P
- mkbkn 1y agoDoes that mean that sooner or later US-based LLM companies will also be required to do so?
- alpineman 1y agoCancelling my NYTimes subscription - they are massively overreaching by pushing for this
- atoav 1y agoEver since the patriot act I operate under the assumption that if a service is located in the US it is eventually already in acrive collaboration in by the US government or in the process of being forced to do so. Therefore any such service is out of the question for work-related stuff.
- junon 1y agoMaybe this is in TFA but I can't see it, does this affect European users? Are they only logging everything in the US?
- glookler 1y agoI don't know, but the claim pertains to damages from helping users bypass paywalls. Assuming a European can pay for many US sites this isn't a situation where the location of the user relates to the basis.
- junon 1y agoUS sites that service European users must adhere to GDPR themselves, or block access. Those are the rules. If OpenAI is adhering to a US court order that violated the GDPR for European users that's going to cause a huge uproar.
- glookler 1y agoNaturally, and how little a US court is likely to care about its actions putting you in these kinds of damned if you do/don't positions in international law is something to think about when building the structure of an international business.
- HPsquared 1y agoWorldwide, I think.
- singularity2001 1y agoDoesn't the EU pose very strict privacy requirements now? I mean NSA knows more about you than your mom and the Stasi ever dreamt of but that's not part of the court order.
- msgodel 1y agoHow is anyone surprised by this?
- mjgant 1y agoI wonder how this affects Microsoft's privacy policy for Azure Open AI? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/cognitive-services/openai/data-privacy?tabs=azure-portal https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/cognitive-services/o...
- DrScientist 1y agoIt's a day to day legal reality - that normal businesses live with every day - that if you are in any sort of legal dispute, particularly over things like IP, that legal hold ( don't delete ) get's put on anything that's likely relevant. It's entirely reasonable, and standard practice for courts to say 'while the legal proceedings is going on don't delete potential evidence relevant to the case'. More special case whining from tech bro's - who don't seem to understand the basic concepts of fairness or justice.
- baalimago 1y agoWhat does "slam" even mean in this context..?
- seb1204 1y agoClick on it. To be honest I'm totally over the over hyped sensational headlines I see on most post or pages.
- romanovcode 1y ago"slam" usually means that the article was written using AI.
- josh2600 1y agoEnd to end encryption of these systems cannot come soon enough!
- eterm 1y agoWhy would e2e help here? The other end is the one that's ordered to preserve the logs.
- rkagerer 1y agoThis highlights a significance today's cloud-addicted generation seems to completely ignore: who has control of your data. I'm not talking about contractual control (which is largely mooted as pretty much every cloud service has a ToS that's grossly skewed toward their own interests over yours, with clauses like indemnifications, blanket grants to share your data with "partners" without specifying who they are or precisely what details are conveyed, mandatory arbitration, and all kinds of other exceptions to what you'd consider respectful decency), but rather where your data lives and is processed. If you truly want to maintain confidence it'll remain private, don't send it to the cloud in the first place.
- fireflash38 1y agoYeah, I see a ton of people all up in arms about privacy but ignoring that OpenAI doesn't give a rats ass about others privacy (see: scraping). Like why one good other bad?
- daveoc64 1y agoIf something is able to be scraped, it isn't private. There is no technical reason for chats people have with ChatGPT or any similar service to be available on the web to everyone, so there is no way for them to be scraped.
- brookst 1y agoIt’s not zero sum. I can believe that openai does not take privacy seriously enough and also that I don’t want every chat I’ve ever had with their product to be entered into the public record. “If one is good the other must be good” is far too simplistic thinking to apply to a situation like this.
- fireflash38 1y agoI personally just can't fathom the logic that sending something so private and critical to OpenAI is ok, but to have courts view it is not? Like if it's so private, why in hell would you give it to a company that has shown that it cares not at all about others privacy?
- sinuhe69 1y agoWhy could a court favor the interest of the New York Times in a vague accusation versus the interest and right of hundred millions people? Billion people use the internet daily. If any organization suspects some people use the Internet for illicit purposes eventually against their interests, would the court order the ISP to log all activities of all people? Would Google be ordered to save the search of all its customers because some might use it for bad things? And once we start, where will we stop? Crimes could happen in the past or in the future, will the court order the ISP and Google to retain the logs for 10 years, 20 years? Why not 100 years? Who should bear the cost for such outrageous demands? The consequences of such orders are of enormous impact the puny judge can not even begin to comprehend. Privacy right is an integral part of the freedom of speech, a core human right. If you don’t have private thoughts, private information, anybody can be incriminated against them using these past information. We will cease to exist as individuals and I argue we will cease to exist as human as well.
- fireflash38 1y agoIn your arguments for privacy, do you consider privacy from OpenAI?
- rvnx 1y agoCut a joke about ethics and OpenAI
- ethersteeds 1y agoHe is what now?! That is a risible claim.
- nindalf 1y agoHe was being facetious.
- ethersteeds 1y agoAlas, it was too early
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kragen 1y agoCopyright in its current form is incompatible with private communication of any kind through computers, because computers by their nature make copies of the communication, so it makes any private communication through a computer into a potential crime, depending on its content. The logic of copyright enforcement, therefore, demands access to all such communications in order to investigate their legality, much like the Stasi. Inevitably such a far-reaching state power will be abused for prurient purposes, for the sexual titillation of the investigators, and to suppress political dissent.
- 6stringmerc 1y agoThis is a ludicrous assertion and factually inaccurate beyond all practical intelligence. A computer in service of an individual absolutely follows copyright because the creator is in control of the distribution and direction of the content. Besides, copyright is a civil statute, not criminal. Everything about this comment is the most obtuse form of FUD possible. I’m pro copyright reform, but this is “Uncle off his meds ranting on Facebook” unhinged and shouldn’t be given credence whatsoever.
- kragen 1y agoNone of that is correct. Some of it is not even wrong, demonstrating an unbelievably profound ignorance of its topic. Furthermore, it is gratuitously insulting.
- pjc50 1y ago> Besides, copyright is a civil statute, not criminal Nope. https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/copyright/criminal-copyright-infringement/ https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/copyright/crimi...
- malwrar 1y ago> A computer in service of an individual absolutely follows copyright because the creator is in control of the distribution and direction of the content. I don’t understand what means. A computer in service of an individual turns copyright law into mattress tag removal law—practically unenforceable.
- FrustratedMonky 1y agoI thought it was a given that they were saving all logs, to in turn use for training.
- strogonoff 1y agoAnyone who seriously cared about their privacy would not be using any of the commercial LLM offerings. This is the greatest honeypot for profile building the ad tech ever had.
- mritchie712 1y agoyou're worried about ad targeting?
- bgwalter 1y agoAd targeting, user profiling etc. Post Snowden we can reasonably assume that the NSA will get an interface.
- strogonoff 1y agoGoes hand in hand with everything else, like price discrimination, including by insurance companies, which in all likelihood are not required to disclose that the reason your health insurance premiums are up is because you asked ChatGPT how to quit smoking.
- bgwalter 1y agoI've criticized the NYT and paywalls many times myself, but first of all OpenAI itself has all your data and we know how "delete" functions work in other places. The Twitter users quoted by Ars Technica, who cite "boomer copyright concerns" are pretty short sighted. The NYT and other mainstream sources, with all their flaws, provide the historical record that pundits can use to discuss issues. Glenn Greenwald can only point out inconsistencies of the NYT because the NYT exists. It is often the starting point for discussions. Some YouTube channels like the Grayzone and Breaking Points send reporters directly to press conferences etc. But that is still not the norm and important information should not be stored in a disorganized YouTube soup. So papers like the NYT need to survive for democracy to function.
- mathgradthrow 1y agocan we ban slam as a headline word?
- Tteriffic 1y agoTimes is taking a risk. The costs of all this will fall on them, if they don’t get the judgement they sought at the end of the day. Plus OpenAI controls those costs and could drive them up. Plus any future litigation by OpenAI users suffering damages due to this could arguably be brought against Time years forward. It’s an odd strategy on their part for evidence that could have just been adduced by a statistician (maybe).
- segmondy 1y ago... and this is why I run local models. my data, my data.
- HardCodedBias 1y agoWe have really lost the thread WRT our legal system when district court judges have such wide ranging power. I understand that everything can be appealed, but these judges can cause considerable harm. Ona T. Wang (she/her) ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/ona-t-wang-she-her-a1548b3/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ona-t-wang-she-her-a1548b3/ ) would have a difficult time getting a job at OpenAI but she is given the full force of US law to direct the company in almost anyway she sees fit. The wording is quite explcit, and forceful: Accordingly, OpenAI is NOW DIRECTED 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), whether such data might be deleted at a user’s request or because of “numerous privacy laws and regulations” that might require OpenAI to do so. Again, I have no idea how to fix this, but it seems broken.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nateglims 1y agoThat seems a little apocalyptic. She's are a magistrate judge and is making sure evidence isn't destroyed. After the conclusion of the case they will be able to delete the data. The legal system handles this stuff by allowing you to bring in experts which seems a lot more reasonable than every judge being an expert in technical details AND the law.
- b0a04gl 1y ago[dead]
- robomartin 1y agoFrom the article: "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." This is the consequence and continuation of the dystopian reality we have been living for many years. One where a random person, influencer, media outlet, politician attacks someone, a company or an entity to cause harm and even total destruction (losing your job, company boycott, massive loss of income, reputation destruction, etc.). This morning, on CNBC, Palantir's CEO discussed yet another false accusation made against the company by --surprise-- the NY Times, characterizing it as garbage. Prior to that was the entirety of the media jumping on Elon Musk accusing him of being a Nazi for a gesture used by dozens and dozens of politicians and presenters, most recently Corey Booker. Lies and manipulation. I do think that people are waking up to this and massively rejecting professional mass manipulators. We now need to take the next step and have them suffer real legal consequences for constant lies and, for Picard's sake, also address any influence they might have over the courts.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y agoPerhaps OpenAI should not be collecting sensitive data in the first place. Who knows what they are using it for. Whereas parties to litigation that receive sensitive data are subject to limits on how it can be used.
- ryeguy_24 1y agoWould Microsoft have to comply with this also? Most enterprise users are acquiring LLM services through Microsoft's instance of the models in Azure? (i.e. data is not going to Open AI but enterprise gets to use Open AI models)
- anbende 1y agoMy (not a lawyer) understanding is "no", because Microsoft is not administering the model (making available the chatbot and history logging), not retaining chats (typically, unless you configure it specifically to do this), and any logs or history are only retained on the customer's servers or tenant. Accessing information on a customer's server or tenant (I have been assured) would require a court order for the customer directly. But... as an 365 E5 user with an Azure account using the 4o through Foundry... I am much more nervous than I ever have been.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dsign 1y agoThis is a hard blow for OpenAI; I can see my employer scrambling to terminate their contract with them because of this. It could be a boom to Mistral.AI though.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- thanatropism 1y agoCtrl-F doesn't seem to show anyone remembering the Ballad of Scott Alexander. There's no reasonable narrative in which OpenAI are not villains, but NYT is notoriously one to shoot a man in Reno just to see him die.
- heisenbit 1y agoConsidering the use to research medical information or to self sooth psychological conditions through chats and their association with a real person it can get interesting as these domains have fairly stringent need to know rules attached with criminal liabilities.
- qintl55 1y agoClassic example of "courts/lawmakers do NOT understand tech". I don't know why this is still as true as it was 10-20 years ago. You get such weird rulings that are maybe well-intentioned but are so off base on actual impact.
- thunderfork 1y ago[dead]
- next_xibalba 1y ago[flagged]
- tomhow 1y agoYou can't comment like this on Hacker News. Please read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them, particularly these ones: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- rimeice 1y agoI’m curious what you’re asking ChatGPT to get verbatim NYT articles in the response that you then want to delete? If ChatGPT has being doing this, the default is to keep every chat, so I doubt NYT lawyers need the small portion of deleted info to find evidence if it exists. Ofcourse if OpenAI was scanning your chat history for verbatim NYT text and editing and deleting that would be another thing, but that itself would also get noticed.
- hendersoon 1y agoThis is an insane ruling. Asking them to save logs for specific users with is of course perfectly reasonable with a court order. Asking them to save all logs is absurd.
- neuroelectron 1y agoEveryone knows OpenAI is guilty here but they need to prove it. That's what the logs are for. The huge online astroturfing on this subject clearly illustrates how well OpenAI has automated this part of their defense (astroturfing, public outcry). However, I find it unlikely the OpenAI hasn't already built filters to prevent their output from appearing to be regurgitated NYTimes content.
- EasyMark 1y agoWell then they should fight it all the way to SCOTUS, they have the money. It will pay dividend in the long run as it will scare off fewer people who want to use, but don't want to be surveilled for every little thing
- shortsunblack 1y agoThe order mandates retention of all user data, even of non-Americans. This is a massive extraterritorial overreach and a highlight of how US law has zero regard to data protection as a fundamental human right. As if there were not enough concerns about US cloud providers already.
- longnguyen 1y agoShameless plug: I build Chat Vault to help you import all chat data from ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Le Chat (Mistral) to a native mac app. You can search, browse and continue your chats 100% offline. It’s free while in beta https://testflight.apple.com/join/RJx6sP6t https://testflight.apple.com/join/RJx6sP6t