《纽约时报》称OpenAI在ChatGPT版权案中隐匿证据

《纽约时报》和《每日新闻》声称，OpenAI 一直就搜索客户聊天记录数据和训练数据集中他们版权作品的能力撒谎。这是这场长达两年的针对该AI公司的诉讼的最新升级，指控其通过使用《纽约时报》的内容训练生成式AI模型并在用户输出中复制这些新闻作品，从而违反了版权法。

在整个案件中，OpenAI 一直辩称它缺乏搜索自身训练语料库的能力。它还辩称，搜索或提供其海量的 ChatGPT 对话集将在技术上造成负担，并引发用户隐私担忧，因为日志需要被检索、处理并去标识化。新闻机构寻求这些数据，是为了确定其受版权保护的新闻作品是否出现在 OpenAI 的训练数据集中，以及 ChatGPT 生成使用或复制其内容的回复的频率和程度。

在4月由法院下令进行的取证中，OpenAI 的数据隐私工程师 Vinnie Monaco 据称透露，OpenAI 已经对其训练语料库进行过内部搜索和评估，以查找版权新闻作品。

Monaco 的证词还据称透露，早在《纽约时报》提起诉讼之前，OpenAI 就已经汇总了一个约 7800 万条去标识化的 ChatGPT 对话数据库，内部用来确定其侵犯他人作品的程度。除此之外，据称在诉讼提起后不久，OpenAI 还实施了一个名为“Project Giraffe”的工具集，其中包含一个“Bloom”过滤器，用于检测和记录输出中的内容复述。

后两项披露尤为重大。原告最初要求 OpenAI 提供 1.2 亿条聊天记录样本，但 OpenAI 经协商将样本缩减至仅 2000 万条。OpenAI 最终于去年 12 月将该样本提交给法院，但据称其中包含大量涂黑，用法院的话说，使样本变得“不可用”。原告还声称，OpenAI 在他们提起诉讼后删除了数十亿条 ChatGPT 输出内容，直接违反了法院的保全令，而且这家 AI 巨头在样本中替换了数百万条记录。

换言之，他们声称 OpenAI 使获取该公司已掌握的信息变得不必要地困难。

“如果 OpenAI 真心认为复制我们客户的新闻报道是公平合法的，它就不会隐瞒做过这件事的事实。” 原告首席律师 Ian B. Crosby 在一份声明中表示。

现在，《纽约时报》和《每日新闻》请求法官对 OpenAI 进行惩戒，因其涉嫌隐瞒证据并干扰证据开示过程。他们要求法院：阻止 OpenAI 将这 2000 万条聊天记录样本用作证据，理由是这些记录不可靠；认定 ChatGPT 日志原本会显示原告内容被大量复述和用作基础；阻止 OpenAI 辩称其提供的聊天记录未展示大量复述；并要求 OpenAI 支付为此追查证据所产生的法律费用。

OpenAI 发言人 Drew Pusateri 在一份声明中否认了这些指控，指责《纽约时报》随着其案件变弱而试图获取私密用户对话。

“随着《纽约时报》的案件变弱，他们被迫放弃对我们的索赔要求，却仍坚持侵犯与本案无关人员的隐私，包括提出这些公然虚假的指控，” Pusateri 说，“我们将继续捍卫用户的隐私和长期以来公认的合理使用原则。”

The New York Times and The Daily News claim that OpenAI has been lying about its ability to search customer chat log data and training datasets for their copyrighted works. It’s the latest escalation in a two-year lawsuit against the AI firm for allegedly violating copyright law by training its generative AI models on the Times’ content and reproducing that journalism in user outputs.

Throughout the case, OpenAI has argued that it lacked the ability to search its own training corpus. It also argued that searching or producing its massive collection of ChatGPT conversations would be technically burdensome and would raise user-privacy concerns because the logs would need to be retrieved, processed, and de-identified. The outlets sought that data to determine whether their copyrighted journalism was present in OpenAI’s training dataset and whether and how often ChatGPT generated responses using or reproducing their content.

In an April court-ordered deposition, OpenAI data privacy engineer Vinnie Monaco allegedly revealed that OpenAI had already conducted internal searches and evaluations of its training corpus to search for copyrighted journalism works.

Monaco’s deposition also allegedly revealed that, beginning before the NYT filed its lawsuit, OpenAI had already amassed a database of about 78 million de-identified ChatGPT conversations that it was using internally to determine how much it was infringing on others’ works. On top of that dataset, OpenAI also allegedly implemented a “Bloom” filter as part of a set of tools called “Project Giraffe,” which detected and kept a record of regurgitation in outputs, shortly after the lawsuit was filed.

Those last two revelations are particularly significant. The plaintiffs had originally asked OpenAI to provide a sample of 120 million chat logs, but OpenAI had negotiated to bring the sample down to just 20 million. OpenAI finally submitted that sample to the courts last December, but it had allegedly included so many redactions as to render the sample “unusable,” in the court’s words. The plaintiffs also claimed OpenAI deleted billions of ChatGPT outputs after they filed suit in direct violation of the court’s preservation order, and that the AI giant substituted millions of logs in the requested sample.

In other words, they claim OpenAI made it needlessly difficult to obtain information that the company had already collected.

“If OpenAI genuinely believed that copying our clients’ journalism was fair and legal, it wouldn’t have hid the truth about having done it,” Ian B. Crosby, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

Now, the NYT and The Daily News are asking the judge to discipline OpenAI for allegedly withholding evidence and messing with the discovery process. They are asking the court to prevent OpenAI from using the 20 million chat log sample as evidence, claiming it is unreliable; to accept as fact that ChatGPT logs would have shown major regurgitation and grounding of the plaintiffs’ content; to prevent OpenAI from arguing that its provided chat logs don’t demonstrate substantial regurgitation; and to make OpenAI pay legal fees for having to chase down this evidence.

In a statement, OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri denied the allegations, accusing the Times of trying to access private user conversations as its case weakens.

“As the Times’ case weakens and they’ve been forced to drop claims against us, they’re persisting with their efforts to invade the privacy of people who have nothing to do with this case, including by making these blatantly false allegations,” Pusateri said. “We’ll continue defending our users’ privacy and the long-established principles of fair use.”