Originally published January 6, 2026; updated July 9, 2026 A side controversy in the OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation case going on in federal court in New York City has been that regular users’ ChatGPT conversations were ordered disclosed to the plaintiffs for searching and perhaps other litigation-related uses. This notion first caused quite a stir with ChatGPT users commenting on Reddit, for example, when Judge Wang, the magistrate judge overseeing “discovery,” which is the exchange of documents and information between the litigating parties, back in mid 2025 ordered all ChatGPT conversation transcripts or “output logs” be preserved by defendant OpenAI. Then in November 2025 Judge Wang ordered that 20 million (down from an original requested 120 million) of these user conv...