OpenAI Vs New York Times: Federal Judge Ruled to Hand Over Millions of Chat Logs

Introduction

In late 2023, The New York Times (NYT), joined by other major news publishers, filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against OpenAI (and its partner Microsoft), alleging that OpenAI had used their copyrighted journalistic content without permission to train its artificial-intelligence models including the widely used chatbot platform ChatGPT. The plaintiffs argue that ChatGPT not only learned from their articles, but sometimes even reproduced their content or substantially similar text in response to user prompts, undermining the value of original journalism.

To prove their claim,the plaintiffs have demanded access to vast numbers of ChatGPT logs (users’ conversations), claiming they are essential to prove how the AI system uses and replicates copyrighted material. OpenAI,on the other hand, has resisted on privacy grounds, arguing that disclosing millions of private conversations most of which have nothing to do with NYT content would violate user privacy and trust.

As of a recent ruling in December 2025, a U.S. federal judge has ordered OpenAI to hand over 20 million ChatGPT chat logs with the condition that these chats remain completely anonymized meaning any kind of indentity marks such as logging details and IP addresses be completely erased. The case now stands at a pivotal moment, with potentially major consequences for how generative AI is governed, what protections exist for user data, and how copyright law intersects with AI training.

This article reviews what has happened so far, what the recent ruling entails, the concerns raised by both sides, and what this moment may signal for the future of AI, creativity, and media rights.

What Has Happened Till Now?

Filing of the lawsuit (2023)

In December 2023, NYT initiated the lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the companies used millions of its news articles, without authorization, to train AI models and that ChatGPT sometimes produced verbatim or near-verbatim material from those articles in response to user prompts. This raised serious concerns about copyright infringement by AI systems.

Early legal proceedings and partial denial of dismissal (2025)

In the months leading up to 2025, OpenAI challenged the lawsuit, seeking dismissal of the core claims. However, a U.S. District Judge, Sidney H. Stein, denied the motion to dismiss the core copyright claims allowing the case to proceed. Ancillary claims (such as some “unfair competition” or DMCA-related ones) were narrowed or dismissed without prejudice.
Meanwhile, NYT and other plaintiffs pressed for discovery in particular, access to ChatGPT logs (user prompt-output pairs, or full conversations) that could show how often ChatGPT regurgitated or reproduced their copyrighted text.

Initial preservation order, but no wholesale data retention (January 2025)

In January 2025, during a discovery status conference, the court considered whether to order OpenAI to preserve and indefinitely retain all ChatGPT output log data. The court initially denied such a sweeping “wholesale preservation” request, but asked whether a subset of logs appropriately anonymized and segregated could be preserved for relevant users.
OpenAI, citing privacy laws, user preferences (many users delete their chats), and data-governance norms, resisted broad retention.

Escalation of demand and narrowing compromise (late 2025)

As the case developed, plaintiffs increased pressure: they initially requested a staggering 1.4 billion conversations (logs) but later narrowed their request to a sample of 20 million ChatGPT logs covering conversations between December 2022 and November 2024.
On November 7, 2025, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang ordered OpenAI to produce the 20 million chats, under the condition they be anonymized. The judge deemed the logs relevant to the plaintiffs’ claims and concluded that privacy concerns could be addressed through “exhaustive de-identification” along with a protective order.
OpenAI responded with urgency: on November 12, they filed a motion to overturn the order, arguing the demand is overly broad, risks user privacy, and constitutes a “fishing expedition.” The company emphasized that “99.99%” of the conversations are unrelated to NYT content.
Plaintiffs rejected OpenAI’s alternative proposals (such as targeted keyword-based searches within a smaller sample, or high-level metadata summarization), saying those would not allow adequate expert analysis of how ChatGPT functions notably, how the model retrieves, reproduces, or “hallucinates” news content.
On November 13, Judge Wang denied OpenAI’s attempt to stay (pause) the production order. The original deadline (Nov 14) to produce the anonymized logs remained in force unless OpenAI obtained emergency relief from a higher court.

Thus, by mid-November 2025, the stage was set: OpenAI either complies and hands over 20 million anonymized chat logs or appeals and seeks to block the order.

What Is the Recent Ruling?

On December 3, 2025, the court’s order became final (publicly released): Magistrate Judge Ona Wang ruled that OpenAI must produce 20 million anonymized ChatGPT user logs to the news-organization plaintiffs, including The New York Times.

Key elements of the ruling:

The logs must be de-identified (usernames, IP addresses, personal identifiers removed). The court affirmed that de-identification plus a protective order provides sufficient privacy protection.
The judge rejected OpenAI’s privacy and overbroad-disclosure objections, stating that the logs are “relevant” to the plaintiffs’ core claims.
OpenAI has been given a compliance deadline of seven days (after anonymization is complete). At the same time, OpenAI has indicated that it is appealing the ruling to the presiding district judge (Sidney Stein).

What this means and potential effects:

This is, by far, one of the largest-scale orders for “user conversations” from a major AI system, under a discovery demand. By granting access to 20 million full conversations, the court has opened the door to extremely broad scrutiny into how people use ChatGPT, how often the model reproduces copyrighted text, and what kinds of user prompts lead to such reproduction.
For plaintiffs (news outlets), this provides a massive trove of data thousands or millions of instances where their copyrighted material may have been reproduced which could strengthen their arguments that OpenAI’s training practices constitute mass copyright infringement.
For OpenAI (and more broadly for AI companies), this ruling represents a serious challenge: it signals that courts are willing to pierce privacy protections in order to enable discovery in copyright lawsuits. This sets a precedent whereby user-generated content and AI interaction logs can be treated as evidence in copyright litigation, even en masse, so long as anonymization is claimed sufficient.
For users, the ruling raises privacy and data-governance concerns: even if logs are anonymized, metadata or the content of conversations could still contain sensitive details. The case may shake public trust in AI services’ ability to protect private user data.

In short the December 3 ruling could reshape not only the outcome of this lawsuit, but also legal norms around AI, privacy, and discovery in the coming years.

Concerns Raised by Both Parties

Concerns of The New York Times and Other Plaintiffs

Copyright infringement & value erosion: Plaintiffs argue that ChatGPT and similar AI systems have ingested millions of their copyrighted articles and now regurgitate them sometimes verbatim or near-verbatim in response to user prompts. This undermines the value of journalism, degrades original content, and threatens the business model of news organizations.
Need for full evidence: They contend that partial or filtered disclosure would not be sufficient for proper expert analysis. To truly understand how the AI works how often it retrieves or “hallucinates” (i.e., recreates from memory) NYT content they need access to actual user conversations. Without that, they cannot test allegations about systematic copying or improper training.
Accountability and fairness: As they see it, AI firms should not be allowed to build powerful tools using journalism content without permission and then refuse to show how that content is being used. Granting access to logs is part of ensuring transparency and fairness, and protecting the rights of content creators.

Concerns of OpenAI (and Implicitly, Privacy Advocates & Users)

Massive privacy risk & overbreadth: OpenAI warns that the forced disclosure of 20 million complete conversations would expose private, often highly personal conversations of millions of users — most of whom are entirely unrelated to the lawsuit. Releasing entire conversations, even if anonymized, could reveal sensitive personal data.
“Fishing expedition” & irrelevance: OpenAI claims that 99.99% of the chats are irrelevant to the copyright claims. Forcing disclosure of all logs turns the request into a speculative “fishing expedition,” rather than a focused search for relevant evidence.
User trust & data-governance norms: The company argues that the court order undermines its longstanding privacy commitments to users. Under normal operations, ChatGPT conversations are automatically deleted within 30 days (unless retained for legal obligations), and users have the right to control their data. Mandating wholesale log production would violate those norms.
Precedent risk: OpenAI warns that this ruling could set a dangerous precedent: in future lawsuits, any plaintiff could demand tens of millions of conversations even where only a small fraction may be relevant effectively turning user conversations into discoverable commodities for any litigation.

Beyond the immediate players, privacy advocates worry this could erode users’ confidence in AI services making them hesitant to trust platforms with sensitive or private conversations, if there is a chance they might be handed over in litigation.

Conclusion: What This Means and What Should Be Done

The ruling in favor of NYT marks a major milestone in the unfolding legal war between generative-AI companies and content creators. By compelling OpenAI to hand over 20 million ChatGPT logs, the court has affirmed that user interactions with AI can be vital evidence in copyright litigation even at massive scale.

At the same time, the decision raises deeply unsettling questions about user privacy, data governance, and the boundaries of accountability for AI platforms. If courts routinely allow such wholesale disclosure, users may see AI tools as less private; companies may face increased legal risk; and the tension between innovation and individual privacy could grow.

In light of this, several preventive measures and broader reforms should be considered:

Adopt stricter data-governance and retention policies: AI companies should design systems so that user chats are retained for only as long as necessary, with automatic deletion by default. If data is to be preserved for legal reasons, it should be isolated, access-restricted, and time-limited.
Establish clear industry standards and legal guidelines: Legislatures and regulators should consider creating frameworks for AI training that respect both copyright and data privacy. Such frameworks might include licensing mechanisms for training data, transparency requirements, and protections for user data.
Protect human authorship and creative value: As AI systems grow more capable, it remains vital to ensure that human creativity, journalism, literature, research — is respected and that creators get fair compensation and recognition. Content owners and AI developers should explore mutually beneficial licensing models rather than adversarial litigation.
Promote user awareness and consent: Users of AI tools should be clearly informed about what happens to their data, how long it’s retained, and under what circumstances it may be disclosed. Consent and control over data are critical to maintaining trust.

Ultimately, the future of AI and creative industries should not be a zero-sum game. It is possible and necessary to build AI in a way that respects copyright, preserves user privacy, and still allows innovation to flourish. The recent ruling in OpenAI vs. The New York Times underscores just how urgent it is to strike that balance.