OpenAI intends to challenge the court ruling that requires the company to indefinitely store ChatGPT user data. This decision was made on May 13, 2025, as part of a lawsuit filed by The New York Times, which has been ongoing since November 2023.
This is reported by Finway
Essence of the Lawsuit and Arguments of the Parties
The New York Times filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI and Microsoft of copyright infringement. According to the publication’s claims, its materials were used to train a large language model without proper permission. In turn, OpenAI stated that the publication’s journalists used specific queries to obtain the information that formed the basis of the lawsuit and even accused The New York Times of hacking ChatGPT.
Judge Vona T. Wang ordered OpenAI to “preserve and isolate all log output data that would otherwise be deleted until further court order.” This requirement was a response to The New York Times’ motion, which fears possible deletion of evidence by the company. The publication emphasized that under certain conditions, it is possible to bypass the blocking and obtain summaries of articles using ChatGPT.
OpenAI’s Position and Impact on Users
“This fundamentally contradicts the privacy commitments we have made to our users. […] We firmly believe that this is an overreach by The New York Times. We continue to challenge this ruling while prioritizing your trust and privacy,” said OpenAI’s Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap.
The company emphasized that the court ruling will affect most ChatGPT users, except for subscribers of ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and those using the Zero Data Retention (ZDR) API. At the same time, data will be stored even in the event of forced deletion by the user.
OpenAI assured that it will keep users informed about all subsequent stages of this case.