The federal court in the NYT v. OpenAI case has suspended a broad ruling to preserve all ChatGPT data: the company can return to standard log deletion, but must retain already collected records and information from accounts «tagged» by the plaintiff.
The federal court in the NYT v. OpenAI case has suspended a broad ruling to preserve all ChatGPT data: the company can return to standard log deletion, but must retain already collected records and information from accounts «tagged» by the plaintiff.
As reported by Engadget, Judge Ona T. Wang issued a new order on October 9 that removes OpenAI’s obligation to «preserve and segregate all source logs» going forward. At the same time, the logs accumulated under the previous order remain available to the court, and OpenAI is required to continue to retain user data marked as relevant by The New York Times; the plaintiff can expand the list of such accounts during the investigation.
The court also set a deadline: from September 26, OpenAI must not retain new sets of raw logs, except for cases related to «marked» accounts. This means returning to the usual policy of deleting most chats and temporary sessions, which reduces risks to user privacy and the company’s operating costs. In parallel, the requirements for preserving evidence remain in force in the part that the court considers essential to the NYT lawsuit.
The court previously ruled in May that the logs should be retained entirely, amid allegations by the NYT that it infringed on copyrights while training its models. OpenAI challenged the move as «excessive» and a privacy threat, arguing that removing the right to delete violated agreements with users. Now, the court has significantly narrowed the scope of retention, leaving only targeted exceptions and already accumulated data.
The NYT case against OpenAI and Microsoft was filed in late 2023, alleging that AI models used the publication’s materials without proper compensation. In June 2025, OpenAI appealed the May order to «totally» preserve logs; the company argued that this undermined users’ privacy and went beyond what was necessary to gather evidence. The current ruling does not eliminate the evidence base, but it does restore the normal data deletion regime for most accounts, while preserving the court’s access to already collected logs and to the records of «tagged» users if the NYT expanded the list.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how US Federal investigators arrested 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht. Among the digital evidence is a history of interaction with ChatGPT. The suspect asked to create pictures of a large-scale fire and wondered «if you are to blame if the fire started because of cigarettes.»
