Another good reason to stay logged out when asking ChatGPT questions.
Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy
71–80 of 441 posts
Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy
#72"How dare the New York Times demand access to our vault of everything-we-keep to figure out if we're a bunch of lying asses. We must resist them in the name of user privacy! Signed, the people who have scraped literally everything to incorporate it into the products we make." OpenAI may be trying to paint themselves as the goody-two-shoes here, but they're not.
But that vault can contain conversation between me and chatgpt, which I willingly did, but with the expectation that only openai has access to it. Why should some lawyer working for NYT have access to it? OpenAI is precisely correct, no matter what other motives could be there.
https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy/
> We may use Personal Data for the following purposes: [...] To comply with legal obligations and to protect the rights, privacy, safety, or property of our users, OpenAI, or third parties.
OpenAI outright says it will give your conversations to people like lawyers.
If you thought they wouldn't give it out to third parties, you not only have not read OpenAI's privacy policy, you've not read any privacy policy from a big tech company (because all of them are basically maximalist "your privacy is important, we'll share your data only with us and people who we deem worthy of it, which turns out to be everybody.")
Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
>…”as does any culpability for poisoning yourself, suicide, and anything else we clearly enabled but don’t want to be blamed for!” Should walmart be "culpable" for selling rope that someone hanged themselves with? Should google be "culpable" for returning results about how to commit suicide?
This is as unproductive as "guns don't kill people, people do." You're stripping all legitimacy and nuance from the conversation with an overly simplistic response.
>You're stripping all legitimacy and nuance from the conversation with an overly simplistic response.
An overly simplistic claim only deserves an overly simplistic response.
Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy
#74As in every other dealing, OpenAI would have you believe they are so important that they are exempt from the legal discovery process.
Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy
#75Almost every comment (five) so far is against this: 'An incredibly cynical attempt at spin', 'How dare the New York Times demand access to our vault of everything-we-keep to figure out if we're a bunch of lying asses', etc. In direct contrast: I fully agree with OpenAI here. We can have a more nuanced opinion than 'piracy to train AI is bad therefore refusing to share chats is bad', which sounds absurd but is genuine…
> The tech community has largely stood against this kind of thing when it's been invasive scanning of private messages, tracking user data
The tech community has been doing the scanning and tracking.
Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy
#76I fully believe that OpenAI is essentially stealing the work of others by training their models on it without permission. However, giving a corporation infamous for promoting authoritarianism full access to millions of private conversations is not the answer. OpenAI is right here. The NYT needs to prove their case another way.
> infamous for promoting authoritarianism
what are you referencing here?
Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy
#77I wouldn't want to make it out like I think OpenAI is the good guy here. I don't. But conversations people thought they were having with OpenAI in private are now going to be scoured by the New York Times' lawyers. I'm aware of the third party doctrine and that if you put something online it can never be actually private. But I think this also runs counter to people's expectations when they're using the product. In c…
To show harm they need the proof, this is the point of the lawsuit. They have sufficient evidence that OpenAI was scraping the web and the NY Times.
When Altman says "They claim they might find examples of you using ChatGPT to try to get around their paywall." he is blatantly misrepresenting the case.
https://smithhopen.com/2025/07/17/nyt-v-openai-microsoft-ai-...
"The lawsuit focuses on using copyrighted material for AI training. The NYT says OpenAI and Microsoft copied vast amounts of its content. They did this to build generative AI tools. These tools can output near-exact copies of NYT articles. Therefore, the NYT argues this breaks copyright laws. It also hurts journalism by skipping paywalls and cutting traffic to original sites. The complaint shows examples where ChatGPT mimics NYT stories closely. This could lead to money loss and harm from AI errors, called hallucinations."
This has nothing to do with the users, it has everything to do with OpenAI profiting off of pirated copyrighted material.
Also, Altmans is getting scared because the NY Times proved to the judge that CahtGPT copied many articles:
"2025 brings big steps in the case. On March 26, 2025, Judge Sidney Stein rejected most of OpenAI’s dismissal motion. This lets the NYT’s main copyright claims go ahead. The judge pointed to “many” examples of ChatGPT copying NYT articles. He found them enough to continue. This ruling dropped some side claims, like unfair competition. But it kept direct and contributory infringement, plus DMCA breaches."
Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy
#78OpenAI is so full of shit, this is incredible. There is a protective order and the logs are anonymized. Yet they would happily give this all to the gov't under a warrant. Incredibly self serving bs from them. The court ordered the production, I'm not sure what OpenAI is even trying to sell people exactly.
Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy
#79So why aren’t they offering for an independent auditor to come into OpenAI and inspect their data (without taking it outside of OpenAI’s systems)? Probably because they have a lot to hide, a lot to lose, and no interest in fair play. Theoretically, they could prove their tools aren’t being used to doing anything wrong but practically, we all know they can’t because they are actually in the wrong (in both the moral an…
By the same token, why isn't NYT proposing something like that rather than the world's largest random sampling? You don't have to think that OpenAI is good to think there's a legitimate issue over exposing data to a third party for discovery. One could see the Times discovering something in private conversations outside the scope of the case, but through their own interpretation of journalistic necessity, believe it'…
>By the same token, why isn't NYT proposing something like that rather than the world's largest random sampling?
It's OpenAI's data, there is a protective order in the case and OpenAI already agreed to anonymize it all.
>Part of OpenAI holding up their side of the bargain on user data, to the extent they do, is that they don't roll over like a beaten dog to accommodate unconditional discovery requests.
lol... what?
Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy
#80If there's one thing I've learned about Sam Altman it's that he's a shrewd political manipulator and every public move is in service of a hidden agenda[1]. What is it here?
- Is it part of a slow process of eroding public expectations of data privacy while blaming it on an external actor?
- Is it to undermine trust in traditional media, in an effort to increase dependence on AI companies as a source of truth?
- Is something else I'm not seeing?
I'm guessing it's all three of these?
[1] Those emails that came up in the suit with Elon Musk, followed by his eventual complete takeover of OpenAI, and the elaborate process of getting himself installed as chairman of the Reddit board to get the original founders back in control are prominent examples.