OpenAI is facing a class-action lawsuit, accused of allowing outsourced personnel to read ChatGPT conversations
Two ChatGPT users from California filed a proposed class action lawsuit against OpenAI in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California this month, accusing the company of failing to adequately inform users that their real conversations were being handed over to external contractors for processing. The lawsuit was served to OpenAI on September 2, focusing on its internal initiative Project Lily. According to the complaint, "AI data reviewers" and "chatbot evaluators" recruited through a third-party staffing company read real ChatGPT prompts and complete conversations, summarize user intent, and score and comment on responses from four models on a scale of 1 to 7.This process is known in the industry as reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), which is a fundamental method for enhancing chatbot capabilities. The complaint states that users were never explicitly informed that a person, rather than a machine, might be reading their conversations. OpenAI filters conversations through an automated system before human review, but the complaint alleges that the filters cannot intercept all content, and personal details sometimes still reach contractors. 404 Media first reported on the project on September 14 and found that the reviewers' dashboard included "user memory summaries," which could expose users' approximate locations, occupations, or private life information, even though usernames had been removed.OpenAI stated that such reviews aim to reduce two behaviors: chatbots behaving too much like humans and overly catering to users, referred to by researchers as "flattery." The complaint raises eight legal claims, including violations of California's Unfair Competition Law, Consumer Privacy Act, and common law claims for intrusion into private affairs, with the plaintiffs seeking damages, restitution of unjust enrichment, and punitive damages.