Judge Orders OpenAI to Preserve Data in Copyright Lawsuit
A federal judge upheld an order requiring OpenAI to preserve training data and logs in a copyright lawsuit filed by news outlets including the New York Daily News, who allege that ChatGPT was trained on millions of copyrighted works without consent or payment. OpenAI had argued that preserving user conversation data violated privacy norms, but the court rejected this objection.
What happened
A federal judge in Manhattan Federal Court denied OpenAI's objection to a data preservation order on June 27, 2025, upholding an earlier ruling directing the company to preserve logs and data slated for deletion.
News outlets including the New York Daily News sued OpenAI alleging the company trained ChatGPT on millions of copyrighted works without consent or payment. OpenAI had objected to data preservation requests, claiming they violated users' privacy.
Reported impact
The publishers allege that OpenAI incorporated millions of copyrighted works from news organizations into ChatGPT's training data without consent or payment, constituting copyright infringement on a massive scale.
Index analysis
OpenAI argues the data used to train ChatGPT is protected by fair use doctrine. Publishers counter that fair use requires transforming a copyrighted work into something new, which they say did not occur.
Governance controls
The court ordered OpenAI to preserve training data and logs, with the understanding that any data turned over to plaintiffs would be anonymized to protect user privacy.
Classification
Sources and evidence
Sources not yet published
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