12mo ago

OpenAI accidentally deleted potential evidence in NY Times copyright lawsuit

techcrunch.com

OpenAI accidentally deleted potential evidence in NY Times copyright lawsuit (updated) | TechCrunch

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12mo ago

OpenAI "accidentally" deleted potential evidence in NY Times copyright lawsuit | TechCrunch

techcrunch.com /2024/11/20/openai-accidentally-deleted-potential-evidence-in-ny-times-copyright-lawsuit/

43 comments

“Accidentally”
"Accidentally"
Important context:
Data was recovered
Plaintiff does not believe it was purposeful
Cost plaintiff a week's work
Plaintiff has already spent 150 hours going through data
"Accidentally"
"Oopsie woopsie 🤭" - OpenAI
it is the 2024 version of the dog ate my homework
- Barely an inconvenience
  
  I'm gonna need you to get all the way off my back about that missing evidence
Journalistic malpractice to repeat their “accidentally” claim without attribution or quotes
- average tech journalist
“Accidentally”
In Spain, in a major political corruption trial, a party turned in as evidence some drives that had been erased by Dban 7 times. They argued that it was routine to do seven passes.
- It is... It's literally a preconfigured option on the dban selection list.
  Source: My memory... but if that's not good enough, here's wiki too.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darik%27s_Boot_and_Nuke
  and DOD 5220.22-M (7 passes) are also included as options to handle data remanence.
  
  It's an option, but not the default. It takes forever to run, so someone using it is being very intentional.
  It's also considered wildly overkill, especially with modern drives and their data density. Even a single pass of zeros, the fastest and default dban option, wipe data at a level that you would need a nation state actor to even try to recover data.
- Were they erased when the investigation started or was it done time before?
"Upise ahah my bad"
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!
A megafuckhuge IT corp who deals in data doesn't have backups, right, RIGHT???
OopsDidntMeanTo
"Oh, silly me I seem to have deleted all the evidence. Whoops."
Didn't have enough tokens for the history whoops
“My ai ate my homework”
"All of history deleted with one stroke" - Muse
They must have used chatGPT to write the archival script.
The fact that clicking the link takes you to a 404 page definitely helps with the whole "accidentally" bit.
Anyone know if the story turned out to be false and got deleted or if it's just a dud link?
They know they'll get away with it, so why wouldn't they
Oops
I sometimes work with lawyers to do discovery for corporate IT. The good news is, this doesn't really fly in court from what my company's legal team has told me. So either the evidence was SO bad that this was a better option for them, or they actually did shoot themselves in the foot.
Well it was accidental so that's all right.
It really was convenient though.
Accidentally my butt, get em new York times
Uh-huh.
Would spoliation apply here?
No... No it didn't... But you can imagine what it would be like if it did, right?

43 comments