New York Times says OpenAI hid evidence in ChatGPT copyright trial
New York Times says OpenAI hid evidence in ChatGPT copyright trial
《纽约时报》称 OpenAI 在 ChatGPT 版权诉讼中隐瞒证据
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. 《纽约时报》和《每日新闻》声称，OpenAI 在其搜索客户聊天记录数据和训练数据集以查找受版权保护作品的能力上撒了谎。这是针对这家人工智能公司长达两年的诉讼中的最新升级，该诉讼指控 OpenAI 通过使用《纽约时报》的内容训练其生成式 AI 模型，并在用户输出中复制这些新闻报道，从而违反了版权法。
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. 在整个案件审理过程中，OpenAI 一直辩称其没有能力搜索自己的训练语料库。它还辩称，搜索或提供其海量的 ChatGPT 对话记录在技术上负担沉重，并会引发用户隐私问题，因为这些记录需要经过检索、处理和去标识化。这两家媒体寻求获取这些数据，以确定其受版权保护的新闻内容是否存在于 OpenAI 的训练数据集中，以及 ChatGPT 在多大程度上使用或复制了这些内容来生成回复。
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. 在四月份的一次法庭指令证词中，OpenAI 数据隐私工程师 Vinnie Monaco 据称透露，OpenAI 实际上已经对其训练语料库进行了内部搜索和评估，以查找受版权保护的新闻作品。Monaco 的证词还显示，在《纽约时报》提起诉讼之前，OpenAI 就已经建立了一个包含约 7800 万条去标识化 ChatGPT 对话的数据库，并一直在内部使用该数据库来评估其对他人作品的侵权程度。
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. 除了该数据集外，据称 OpenAI 在诉讼提起后不久，还实施了一种名为“Bloom”的过滤器，作为“长颈鹿项目”（Project Giraffe）工具集的一部分，用于检测并记录输出内容中的重复信息。后两项披露尤为重要。原告最初要求 OpenAI 提供 1.2 亿条聊天记录样本，但 OpenAI 通过协商将样本量缩减至 2000 万条。OpenAI 最终于去年 12 月向法院提交了该样本，但据称其中包含了大量删减内容，以至于用法院的话说，该样本已“无法使用”。
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. 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，这直接违反了法院的证据保全令，并且这家 AI 巨头还替换了所要求样本中的数百万条记录。换句话说，他们声称 OpenAI 故意制造障碍，使获取公司早已收集的信息变得不必要地困难。原告首席律师 Ian B. Crosby 在一份声明中表示：“如果 OpenAI 真诚地认为复制我们客户的新闻报道是公平且合法的，它就不会隐瞒已经这样做了的事实。”
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. 目前，《纽约时报》和《每日新闻》正请求法官对 OpenAI 进行处罚，理由是其涉嫌隐瞒证据并干扰证据开示程序。他们要求法院禁止 OpenAI 将这 2000 万条聊天记录样本作为证据使用，称其不可靠；要求法院认定 ChatGPT 记录本应显示出对原告内容的大量重复和引用；禁止 OpenAI 辩称其提供的聊天记录不能证明存在实质性重复；并要求 OpenAI 支付因追查这些证据而产生的法律费用。
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.” OpenAI 发言人 Drew Pusateri 在一份声明中否认了这些指控，并指责《纽约时报》在案件处于劣势时试图获取私人用户对话。“随着《纽约时报》的案件逐渐站不住脚，他们被迫放弃了对我们的部分指控，但他们仍执意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 表示，“我们将继续捍卫用户的隐私以及长期确立的合理使用原则。”