Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7
5 hours ago
NB. There is no order to "collect". The order is to preserve what is already being collected and stored in the ordinary course of business
https://ia801404.us.archive.org/31/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.6...
https://ia801404.us.archive.org/31/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.6...
Why does OpenAI collect and retain for 30 days^1 chats that the user wants to be deleted
It was doing this prior to being sued by the NYT and many others
OpenAI was collecting chats even when the user asked for deletion, i.e., the user did not want them saved
That's why a lawsuit could require OpenAi to issue a hold order, retain these chats for longer and produce them to another party in discovery
If OpenAI was not collecting these chats in the ordinary course of its business before being sued by the NYT and many others, then there would be no "deleted chats" for OpenAI to be compelled by court order to retain and produce to the plaintiffs
1. Or whatever period OpenAI decides on. It could change at any time for any reason. However OpenAI cannot change their retention policy to 0 days or some shortened period after being sued. Google tried this a few years ago. It began destroying chats between employees after Google was on notice it was going to be sued by the US government and state AGs
I'm not commenting on the core point of your comment, only the "why retain for 30 days" question.
Im an age of automated backups and failovers, deleting can be really hard. Part of the answer could simply be that syncing a delete across all the redundancies (while ensuring those redundancies are reliable when a disaster happens and they need to recover or maintain uptime) may take days to weeks. Also the 30 days could be the limit, as oppose to the average or median time it takes.
Maybe an append only data store where actual hard deletes only happen as an async batch job? Still 30 days seems really long for this.
The two documents you linked are responses to specific parts of OpenAI's objection. They're not good sources for the original order.
Nevertheless, you're generally correct but you don't realize why: A core feature of ChatGPT is that it keeps your conversation history right there so you can click on it, review it, and continue conversations across all of your devices. The court order is to preserve what is already present in the system even if the user asks to delete it.
For those who are confused: A core feature of ChatGPT and other LLM accounts is that your past conversations are available to return to, until you specifically delete them. The problem now is that if a user asks for the conversation to be deleted, OpenAI has to retain the conversation for the court order even though it appears deleted.