New York Times Alleges OpenAI Hid Evidence in Copyright Trial

The New York Times and The Daily News have accused OpenAI of withholding evidence in their ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit against the AI firm. The publishers allege that OpenAI misrepresented its capabilities to search customer chat logs and training datasets for copyrighted material.

This accusation is the latest development in a two-year legal battle where OpenAI faces claims of violating copyright law by training its generative AI models on the Times' content and reproducing journalistic material in its outputs. The news outlets seek this data to ascertain if their copyrighted journalism was present in OpenAI's training dataset and how often ChatGPT generates responses that utilize or replicate their work.

Previously, OpenAI argued in court that it lacked the ability to search its own training corpus. The company also contended that producing ChatGPT conversations would be technically burdensome and raise user privacy concerns due to the need for retrieval, processing, and de-identification.

The situation intensified during a court-ordered deposition in April, where OpenAI data privacy engineer Vinnie Monaco allegedly revealed information indicating the company's ability to search its data, adding a new layer to the protracted legal dispute.