A recent ruling in the New York Times copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI has brought an end to a sweeping data preservation order involving ChatGPT user logs.
Federal Judge Ona T. Wang issued an order on October 9 officially lifting the previous directive that required OpenAI to “preserve and segregate all output log data that would otherwise be deleted on a going forward basis.” This means OpenAI is no longer obligated to indefinitely retain chat records from its AI systems.
The New York Times filed its lawsuit in late 2023, accusing OpenAI of using the newspaper’s copyrighted articles to train its language models without permission or compensation. In May 2025, the court mandated that OpenAI keep all chat logs so that the newspaper could analyze them for potential copyright violations. OpenAI appealed, calling the order an “overreach” that presented risks to user privacy and data security.
Judge Wang’s latest decision effectively lifts that burden. As of September 26, OpenAI is no longer required to preserve new chat data—though some exceptions remain. The company must continue to retain chat logs linked to ChatGPT accounts flagged by the New York Times, and data already stored under the previous order will remain accessible to both parties.
The ruling allows the Times to expand its list of flagged accounts as its investigation continues, but the decision significantly narrows the scope of OpenAI’s data retention obligations in the ongoing case.
