• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

OpenAI on Thursday urged a federal judge to throw out a privacy lawsuit by a ChatGPT user who alleged that the company wrongly disclosed her queries to Meta and Google.

In a motion filed with U.S. District Court Judge Marily Huff in the Southern District of California, the artificial intelligence (AI) company argues that the plaintiff, California resident Amargo Couture, consented to the alleged disclosures by accepting OpenAI's privacy policy.

"By inputting prompts into the ChatGPT chat box and/or creating a ChatGPT account, plaintiff was on notice of OpenAI’s terms and privacy policy and consented that information about her use of ChatGPT, including her query topics, would be disclosed to third parties," the company argues. "Plaintiff’s consent precludes her claims."

The company adds that its privacy policy informs users that their personal data, including prompts, is disclosed to "vendors" and "service providers."

The artificial intelligence company's papers come in response to a lawsuit brought in May by Couture, who alleged that she visited ChatGPT and entered queries "related to sensitive information about her health, finances, and other private information."

As with numerous other privacy complaints brought in recent years, she claims ChatGPT transmitted data about her online activity to Meta and Google through embedded tools -- specifically, the Meta Pixel and Google's analytics code.

"Despite reasonable expectations of privacy, and defendant’s legal duties to prevent the disclosure of such private information, defendant disclosed information provided by consumers" to Meta and Google "by incorporating technology owned by each third party into the code of its website," she alleged in a class-action complaint.

Among other claims, the complaint accuses OpenAI of violating federal and California wiretap laws, and engaging in "intrusion upon seclusion" -- a California claim that can be brought over highly offensive privacy violations.

OpenAI is requesting an October 5 hearing on its motion for dismissal.