The New York Times and several news outlets on Thursday filed a motion for sanctions against OpenAI, accusing the company of concealing its ability to search the training datasets and output logs for its models for more than two years as they sought company documents.
The motion’s plaintiffs included the Times, the Daily News, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Intercept and digital publisher and CNET parent Ziff Davis. The 52-page document, filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, claimed that OpenAI’s lying only came to light after a second deposition from Vinnie Monaco, who leads privacy engineering at the company. In that February deposition, the outlets said Monaco revealed OpenAI had searched training datasets and output data despite the company’s initial claims that it couldn’t access that data. The outlets also alleged OpenAI deleted logs, a violation of the court’s preservation orders.
“Instead of just producing that evidence at the start of the case and focusing on the merits of its fair use defense, OpenAI chose obstruction,” the news organizations, through their attorneys, wrote.
The outlets asked the court to recognize the company made false claims and deleted output logs, award them attorneys’ fees and impose any other punishment the court deems fit.
