OpenAI "Accidentally" Deleted Evidence From Its New York Times Lawsuit

File Error

OpenAI made a major oopsie when its engineers accidentally deleted a bunch of evidence sought by the New York Times in its copyright lawsuit against the AI firm and its benefactor Microsoft.

In a letter to the judge presiding over the suit, lawyers for the NYT and the New York Daily News said that a ton of evidentiary files went missing while the attorneys were perusing them.

Earlier this month, the firm provided the publishers' attorneys with two massive caches of training data files from the newspapers, in keeping with its defense that because they were publicly published, it was fair to use those articles to train AI models.

Since the beginning of November, the newspapers' attorneys had spent more than 150 hours sifting through those caches — until, in the middle of the month, OpenAI engineers erased all of the search data in one of the caches.

Partial Recovery

While the company managed to recover most of the data itself, the folder structure and file names were "irretrievably" lost, meaning that the newspapers' attorneys can't use them "to determine where the news plaintiffs’ copied articles were used to build [OpenAI’s] models."

As a result, the lawyers for the NYT and the NYDN had to completely retrace their steps, losing a week of work in the process. Now, the attorneys are asking the judge to make OpenAI do the legwork caused by the apparent error because, as they put it, "OpenAI is in the best position to search its own datasets."

While the attorneys noted that they have "no reason to believe" the erasure was intentional, that deletion has nevertheless set them back as they build their case against the firm.

"The [newspapers] have also provided the information that OpenAI needs to run those searches," the letter reads. "All that is needed is for OpenAI to commit to doing so in a timely manner."

Despite that seemingly reasonable request, it seems that OpenAI may be planning a rebuttal.

"We disagree with the characterizations made," an OpenAI spokesperson told Wired, "and will file our response soon."

More on OpenAI legal moves: OpenAI Implores Judge Not to Expose Communications by Its Top Researchers