Mon Jan 1, 0001

AI Chat History as Discoverable Evidence

Courts treat AI prompts and outputs as electronically stored information (ESI), subject to same discovery rules as emails and text messages.

OpenAI v. New York Times (2025-2026)

  • January 2026: Judge Sidney Stein upheld order requiring OpenAI to produce 20 million ChatGPT conversation logs in NYT copyright litigation. Users whose conversations were included received no notification, no opportunity to object.
  • May 13, 2025: Magistrate Judge Ona Wang ordered OpenAI to “preserve and segregate all output log data that would otherwise be deleted on a going-forward basis” — including chats users had explicitly deleted or that privacy laws would otherwise require erasure. Preservation order ran through September 26, 2025.

Claude Chat Disclosure (SDNY)

Judge Jed Rakoff ordered former company executive to disclose 31 AI-generated documents created using Anthropic’s Claude to prepare reports on his case for lawyers. Court ruled chatbot interactions do not automatically fall under attorney-client privilege or confidentiality protections.

Sources