Millions of Americans share private details with ChatGPT. Some ask medical questions or share painful relationship problems. Others even use ChatGPT as a makeshift therapist, sharing their deepest mental health struggles.

Users trust ChatGPT with these confessions because OpenAI promised them that the company would permanently delete their data upon request.

But last week, in a Manhattan courtroom, a federal judge ruled that OpenAI must preserve nearly every exchange its users have ever had with ChatGPT — even conversations the users had deleted.

As it stands now, billions of user chats will be preserved as evidence in The New York Times’s copyright lawsuit against OpenAI.

Soon, lawyers for the Times will start combing through private ChatGPT conversations, shattering the privacy expectations of over 70 million ChatGPT users who never imagined their deleted conversations could be retained for a corporate lawsuit.........

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