OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has revealed it is fighting an order not to delete any user chats, citing privacy concerns.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Altman tweeted that “recently the NYT asked a court to force us to not delete any user chats. We think this was an inappropriate request that sets a bad precedent. We are appealing the decision. We will fight any demand that compromises our users’ privacy; this is a core principle.
It comes after The New York Times in December 2023 became the first major US media organisation to sue OpenAI (and its main investor Microsoft), alleging that OpenAI’s artificial intelligence models were trained on the publisher’s data.
recently the NYT asked a court to force us to not delete any user chats. we think this was an inappropriate request that sets a bad precedent.
we are appealing the decision.
we will fight any demand that compromises our users’ privacy; this is a core principle.
— Sam Altman (@sama) June 6, 2025
User privacy
In March 2025 US District Judge Sidney Stein of New York dismissed some of the claims made by media organisations, but allowed the bulk of the case to continue, possibly to a jury trial.
But this week Sam Altman in a series of tweets, said his firm is fighting an order to perverse users data outputs.
Altman noted that OpenAI has “been thinking recently about the need for something like “AI privilege; this really accelerates the need to have the conversation. IMO talking to an AI should be like talking to a lawyer or a doctor,” but later added “spousal privilege maybe a better analogy.”
Judge Stein in an April court opinion said that the NYT had made a case that OpenAI and Microsoft were responsible for inducing users to infringe its copyrights.
Then in May 2025, the court said OpenAI had to preserve and segregate all output log data after the NYT asked for the data to be preserved, Reuters noted.
Reuters, citing court filings, reported that Judge Stein was asked to vacate the May data preservation order on 3 June.
The New York Times reportedly declined to comment.
Other newspapers
Last week the NYT had signed a content licensing deal with Amazon, allowing its editorial content will appear across Amazon platforms, including its AI assistant and chatbot, Alexa+.
Financial terms of the licensing deal were not disclosed.
OpenAI however is not just been sued by The New York Times, as others have joined the action.
In February 2024 three US online news outlets sued OpenAI, alleging the AI pioneer had used thousands of their articles to train its chatbots.
Then in May 2024 eight US newspaper publishers had alleged that Microsoft and OpenAI used millions of their articles without payment or permission.
In December 2024 a coalition of Canadian news publishers also filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for allegedly using news content to train ChatGPT.
In January 2025 an Indian news publishing group filed to join the legal action against OpenAI over alleged misuse of copyrighted materials to train ChatGPT models.
