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Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

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Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#161
So much talk about privacy and how this is my private data that the NYT has no right to access.

If this is truly my data then it should be okay for me to download it and train my own model on it right?

Nope, that would explicitly be disallowed under the terms OpenAI has made me sign and they would ban my account and maybe even sue me for it.

So yeah, they are full of shit.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#163

I 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…

Yeah, everyone else in the comments so far is acting emotionally, but -- As a fan and DAU of both OpenAI and the NYT, this is just a weird discovery demand and there should be another pathway for these two to move fwd in this case (NYT to get some semblance of understanding, OAI protecting end-user privacy).

It sounds like the alternate path you're suggesting is for NYT to stop being wrong and let OpenAI continue being right, which doesn't sound much like a compromise to me.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#164

"The New York Times is demanding that we turn over 20 million of your private ChatGPT conversations." As might any plaintiff. NYT might be the first of many others and the lawsuits may not be limited to copyright claims Why has OpenAI collected and stored 20 million conversations (including "deleted chats") What is the purpose of OpenAI storing millions of private conversations By contrast the purpose of NYT's reques…

Is there a technical limitation that prevents chat histories from being stored locally on the user's computer instead of being stored on someone else's computer(s) Why do chat histories need to be accessible by OpenAI, its service partners and anyone with the authority to request them from OpenAI If users want this design, as suggested by HN commenters, if users want their chat histories to be accessible to OpenAI, i…

Presumably for cross-device interactivity. If I interact with ChatGPT on my phone, then open it on my desktop. I might be a bit frustrated that I can't get to the chat I was having on my phone previously.

OpenAI could store the chat conversation in an encrypted format that only you, the user, can decrypt, with the client-side determining the amount of previous messages to include for additional context, but there's plenty of user overhead involved in an undertaking like that (likely a separate decryption password would be needed to ensure full user-exclusive access, etc).

I'd appreciate and use a feature like that, but I doubt most "average" users would care.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#166
Please correct me if I am wrong, but couldn't OpenAi just encrypt every conversation before saving them? With each query to the model the full conversation is fed into the model again, so I guess there is no technical need to store them unencrypted. Unless, of course, OpenAi wants to analyze the chats.

The way I see it, the problem is that OpenAI employees can look at the chats and the fact that some NYT lawyer can look at it doesn't make me more uncomfortable. Insane argumentation. It's like saying an investigator with a court-order should not be allowed to look at stored copies of letters, although the company sending those letters a) looks at them regularly b) stores these copies in the first place.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the feeling, but that's not what this is. NYTimes has produced credible evidence that OpenAI is simply stealing and republishing their content. The question they have to answer is "to what extent has this happened?" That's a question they fundamentally cannot answer without these chat logs. That's what discovery, especially in a copyright case, is about. Think about it this way. Let's say this were a book store…

> The user has no right to privacy The correct term for this is prima facie right. You do have a right to privacy (arguably) but it is outweighed by the interest of enforcing the rights of others under copyright law. Similarly, liberty is a prima facie right; you can be arrested for committing a crime.

> You do have a right to privacy (arguably) but it is outweighed by the interest of enforcing the rights of others under copyright law.

What governs or codifies that? I would have expected that there would need to be some kind of specific overriding concern(s) that would need to apply in order to violate my (even limited) expectation of privacy, not just enforcing copyright law in general.

E.g. there's nothing resembling "probable cause" to search my own interactions with ChatGPT for such violations. On what basis can that be justified?

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#168

If OpenAI hadn't used data from the NYT without permission in the first place this wouldn't have happened. That is the root cause of all this. I'm glad the NYT is fighting them. They've infringed the rights of almost every news outlet but someone has to bring this case.

Exactly. And the OpenAI corporates speak acting like they give a shit about our best interests. Give me a break, Sam Altman. How stupid do you think everyone is? They have proven that they are the most untrustworthy company on the planet And this isn't AI fear speaking. This is me raging at Sam Altman for spreading so much fear, uncertainty, and doubt just to get investments. The rest of us have to suffer for the las…

To me, no company has the customers’ best interests in mind. This whole thing is akin to when Apple was refusing to unlock phones for the FBI. Of course, Apple profits by having people think that they take privacy seriously, and they demonstrate it by protecting users’ privacy. Same thing here; OpenAI needs chats to have some expectation of privacy, especially because a large use case of AI is personal advice on things. So they are fighting to make sure it's true.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#169

I 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…

I get the feeling, but that's not what this is. NYTimes has produced credible evidence that OpenAI is simply stealing and republishing their content. The question they have to answer is "to what extent has this happened?" That's a question they fundamentally cannot answer without these chat logs. That's what discovery, especially in a copyright case, is about. Think about it this way. Let's say this were a book store…

> The user has no right to privacy. The same as how any internet service can be (and have been) compelled to produce private messages.

The legal term is "expectation of privacy", and it does exist, albeit increasingly weakly in the US. There are exceptions to that, such as a subpoena, but that doesn't mean anyone can subpoena anything for any reason. There has to be a legal justification.

It's not clear to me that such a justification exists in this case.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#170
If it's about* proving that people are getting around the paywall with OpenAI, won't it be much easier to prove this with a live reproduction in the court?

* I am not too familiar with this matter and hence definitely am not rooting for one party or another. Asking this just out of technical curiosity.

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