New York Times says OpenAI hid evidence in ChatGPT copyright trial

The New York Times and The Daily News are accusing OpenAI of hiding evidence in an ongoing copyright lawsuit, claiming the company falsely stated it lacked the ability to search its training data and chat logs. According to a court deposition, OpenAI had already conducted internal searches of its training corpus and maintained a database of millions of de-identified conversations to track copyright infringement, contradicting its earlier arguments that such searches would be technically burdensome and raise privacy concerns. The plaintiffs are asking the court to penalize OpenAI for allegedly withholding evidence, deleting outputs after the lawsuit was filed, and providing an unreliable sample of chat logs with excessive redactions. OpenAI has denied the allegations and stated it is defending users' privacy and fair use principles.