Court ends controversial order forcing OpenAI to save deleted ChatGPT logs.

OpenAI will finally stop saving most ChatGPT users' deleted and temporary chats after a court fight compelled the AI firm to retain the logs "indefinitely."

The preservation order came in a lawsuit filed by The New York Times and other news plaintiffs, who alleged that user attempts to skirt paywalls with ChatGPT would most likely set their chats as temporary or delete the logs.

OpenAI vowed to fight the order, defending its policies and users' privacy, but it lost. By July, news plaintiffs started digging through the logs—which only preserved ChatGPT's outputs—while a few ChatGPT users' efforts to intervene were consistently denied, as they were deemed non-parties to the lawsuit.

In an order on Thursday, US Magistrate Judge Ona Wang approved a joint motion from news organizations and OpenAI to terminate the preservation order, although some ChatGPT users' deleted and temporary chats will still be monitored.

Under the agreement, OpenAI was allowed to stop the controversial practice of preserving "all output log data that would otherwise be deleted" on September 26.

...read more at arstechnica.com