OpenAI is facing calls for ‘serious sanctions’ after being accused of repeatedly lying to conceal evidence of copyright infringement. The allegations come from a recent court filing by news organizations suing OpenAI, led by The New York Times.
According to the filing, OpenAI misled the court about the cost and burdens of searching ChatGPT logs, claiming it did not have the technical ability to search large anonymized samples when in fact it had already conducted such searches prior to the start of litigation. This concealment allegedly withheld highly relevant evidence, prolonged discovery, inflated expenses, and burdened the Court.
The New York Times’ spokesperson, Graham James, disputed OpenAI’s claim that news plaintiffs’ case was weakened by dropping claims, suggesting instead that the suit was streamlined and strengthened by adding claims against Microsoft.
In a statement to Ars, NYT’s lead counsel, Ian Crosby, suggested that OpenAI obstructed access to logs and distorted evidence to shield its fair use claims. ‘For over two years, OpenAI lied to The Times, The Daily News Plaintiffs, the public, and the court,’ Crosby said. ‘It claimed searching ChatGPT outputs for copies of The Times’ and the Daily News Plaintiffs’ content was infeasible, burdensome, and invasive of users’ privacy—while at the same time concealing that it had already done such searches.’
The alleged lies were exposed when OpenAI’s ill-prepared witness, Vincent Monaco, was re-deposed. During the subsequent April deposition, he inadvertently revealed that OpenAI misled the court for two years about its ability to search large anonymized samples of ChatGPT logs.
OpenAI had allegedly pretended from the earliest stages of the case that it did not have the technical ability to search large anonymized samples when in fact it had already conducted such searches prior to the start of litigation. This concealment allegedly withheld highly relevant evidence, prolonged discovery, inflated expenses, and burdened the Court.
The court filing alleged that OpenAI had two large samples—spanning 10 million and 78 million logs—which had already been de-identified and could have been made available to news plaintiffs early on to maximize the discovery period. However, OpenAI did not disclose the existence of these samples over two years.
Sanctions are warranted because ‘OpenAI’s concealment of this fact withheld highly relevant evidence, prolonged discovery, inflated expenses, and burdened the Court,’ news plaintiffs alleged.
The 20 million log sample was further skewed when OpenAI used AI to make 19 billion redactions to the sample—so many that the court found the sample unusable. Eventually, OpenAI removed some of the redactions, but ‘even then, a large number of redactions remain, including to News Plaintiffs’ domains, names, and other fields, which has hampered News Plaintiffs’ searches over the data,’ NYT alleged.
The entire time that OpenAI was engaging in the improper over-redaction of this sample, it had in its possession a sample of 78 million conversations that had already been de-identified. OpenAI did not just oppose production of this evidence based on burden or relevance; it falsely represented to the Court that obtaining this evidence was beyond its capabilities without the expenditure of and months of work and that it would be just as easy for Plaintiffs to do this work—without disclosing that this work had already been done.
The alleged lies were exposed when OpenAI’s ill-prepared witness, Vincent Monaco, was re-deposed. During the subsequent April deposition, he inadvertently revealed that OpenAI misled the court for two years about its ability to search large anonymized samples of ChatGPT logs.
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