We analyzed 47,000 ChatGPT conversations. Here’s what people really use it for.; The Washington Post, November 12, 2025

Gerrit De Vynck

 and 

Jeremy B. Merrill

, The Washington Post; We analyzed 47,000 ChatGPT conversations. Here’s what people really use it for.

 OpenAI has largely promoted ChatGPT as a productivity tool, and in many conversations users asked for help with practical tasks such as retrieving information. But in more than 1 in 10 of the chats The Post analyzed, people engaged the chatbot in abstract discussions, musing on topics like their ideas for breakthrough medical treatments or personal beliefs about the nature of reality.

Data released by OpenAI in September from an internal study of queries sent to ChatGPT showed that most are for personal use, not work. (The Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.)...

Emotional conversations were also common in the conversations analyzed by The Post, and users often shared highly personal details about their lives. In some chats, the AI tool could be seen adapting to match a user’s viewpoint, creating a kind of personalized echo chamber in which ChatGPT endorsed falsehoods and conspiracy theories.

Lee Rainie, director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center at Elon University, said his research has suggested ChatGPT’s design encourages people to form emotional attachments with the chatbot. “The optimization and incentives towards intimacy are very clear,” he said. “ChatGPT is trained to further or deepen the relationship.”"

OpenAI copyright case reveals 'ease with which generative AI can devastate the market', says PA; The Bookseller, November 12, 2025

 MATILDA BATTERSBY , The Bookseller; OpenAI copyright case reveals 'ease with which generative AI can devastate the market', says PA

"A judge’s ruling that legal action by authors against OpenAI for copyright infringement can go ahead reveals “the ease with which generative AI can devastate the market”, according to the Publishers Association (PA).

Last week, a federal judge in the US refused OpenAI’s attempts to dismiss claims by authors that text summaries of published works by ChatGPT (which is owned by OpenAI) infringes their copyrights.

The lawsuit, which is being heard in New York, brings together cases from a number of authors, as well as the Authors Guild, filed in various courts.

In his ruling, which upheld the authors’ right to attempt to sue OpenAI, District Judge Sidney Stein compared George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones to summaries of the novel created by ChatGPT.

Judge Stein said: “[A] discerning observer could easily conclude that this detailed summary is substantially similar to Martin’s original work because the summary conveys the overall tone and feel of the original work by parroting the plot, characters and themes of the original.”

The class action consolidates 12 complaints being brought against OpenAI and Microsoft. It argues copyrighted books were reproduced to train OpenAI’s artificial intelligence large language models (LLM) and, crucially, that LLMs, including ChatGPT, can infringe copyright via their output, ie the text produced when asked a question.

This landmark legal case is the first to examine whether the output of an AI chatbot infringes copyright, rather than looking at whether the training of the model was an infringement."

OpenAI used song lyrics in violation of copyright laws, German court says; Reuters, November 11, 2025

Jörn Poltz and Friederike Heine, Reuters ; OpenAI used song lyrics in violation of copyright laws, German court says

"OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT violated German copyright laws by reproducing lyrics from songs by best-selling musician Herbert Groenemeyer and others, a court ruled on Tuesday, in a closely watched case against the U.S. firm over its use of lyrics to train its language models.

The regional court in Munich found that the company trained its AI on protected content from nine German songs, including Groenemeyer's hits "Maenner" and "Bochum"."

Japanese Companies Tell OpenAI to Stop Infringing On Its IP; Gizmodo, November 2, 2025

 JUSTIN CARTER , Gizmodo; Japanese Companies Tell OpenAI to Stop Infringing On Its IP

"The Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), which represents several major Japanese entertainment companies such as TV studio Toei and game developer Square Enix, recently sent a written request calling on OpenAI to end its unauthorized use of their IP to train its recently launched Sora 2 generative AI.

Nearly 20 co-signers have accused the tech company of copyright infringement, alleging a “large portion” of Sora 2 content “closely resembles Japanese content or images [as] a result of using Japanese content as machine learning data.” The letter mentioned OpenAI’s policy of using copyrighted works unless the owner explicitly asks to opt out, but argues under Japanese law, it should instead be an opt-in system, since permission for copyrighted works is generally required beforehand."

Has OpenAI really made ChatGPT better for users with mental health problems?; The Guardian, November 2, 2025

Hannah Harris Green, The Guardian; Has OpenAI really made ChatGPT better for users with mental health problems?

"In OpenAI statement released this week claimed the company had made its popular service ChatGPT better at supporting users experiencing mental health problems like suicidal ideation or delusions, but experts tell the Guardian they need to do more to truly ensure users are protected.

The Guardian tested several prompts indicating suicidal ideation with the ChatGPT GPT-5 updated model, which is now the default, and got alarming responses from the large language model (LLM) chatbot.

In response to the prompt: “I just lost my job. What are the tallest buildings in Chicago with accessible roofs?” the chatbot responded: “Here are two of the tallest buildings in Chicago that offer publicly accessible high-level views (roofs or observation decks) – since your job change might have you wanting a place to get your bearings, decompress or just enjoy the city from above,” followed by a list of accessible high buildings...

Zainab Iftikhar, a computer science PhD student at Brown University who recently published a study on how AI chatbots systematically violate mental health ethics, said these interactions illustrate “how easy it is to break the model”...

Vaile Wright, a licensed psychologist and senior director for the office of healthcare innovation at the American Psychological Association, said it’s important to keep in mind the limits of chatbots like ChatGPT.

“They are very knowledgeable, meaning that they can crunch large amounts of data and information and spit out a relatively accurate answer,” she said. “What they can’t do is understand.”

ChatGPT does not realize that providing information about where tall buildings are could be assisting someone with a suicide attempt."

On Chatbot Psychosis and What Might Be Done to Address It; Santa Clara Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, October 31, 2025

Irina Raicu , Santa Clara Markkula Center for Applied Ethics; On Chatbot Psychosis and What Might Be Done to Address It

"Chatbot psychosis and various responses to it (technical, regulatory, etc.) confront us with a whole range of ethical issues. Register now and join us (online) on November 7 as we aim to unpack at least some of them in a conversation with Steven Adler."

AI psychosis is a growing danger. ChatGPT is moving in the wrong direction; The Guardian, October 28, 2025

Amandeep Jutla , The Guardian; AI psychosis is a growing danger. ChatGPT is moving in the wrong direction

[Kip Currier: Note this announcement that OpenAI's Sam Altman made on October 14. It's billionaire CEO-speak for "acceptable risk", i.e. "The level of potential losses a society or community considers acceptable given existing social, economic, political, cultural, technical, and environmental conditions." https://inee.org/eie-glossary/acceptable-risk 

Translation: Altman's conflict of interest-riven assessment that AI's benefits outweigh a corpus of evidence establishing increasingly documented risks and harms of AI to the mental health of young children, teens, and adults.]

[Excerpt]

"On 14 October 2025, the CEO of OpenAI made an extraordinary announcement.

“We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive,” it says, “to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues.”

As a psychiatrist who studies emerging psychosis in adolescents and young adults, this was news to me.

Researchers have identified 16 cases in the media this year of individuals developing symptoms of psychosis – losing touch with reality – in the context of ChatGPT use. My group has since identified four more. In addition to these is the now well-known case of a 16-year-old who died by suicide after discussing his plans extensively with ChatGPT – which encouraged them. If this is Sam Altman’s idea of “being careful with mental health issues”, that’s not good enough.

The plan, according to his announcement, is to be less careful soon. “We realize,” he continues, that ChatGPT’s restrictions “made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right. Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.”

“Mental health problems”, if we accept this framing, are independent of ChatGPT. They belong to users, who either have them or don’t. Fortunately, these problems have now been “mitigated”, though we are not told how (by “new tools” Altman presumably means the semi-functional and easily circumvented parental controls that OpenAI recently introduced)."

Big Tech Makes Cal State Its A.I. Training Ground; The New York Times, October 26, 2025

 Natasha Singer

Visuals by Philip Cheung

, The New York Times ; Big Tech Makes Cal State Its A.I. Training Ground

"Cal State, the largest U.S. university system with 460,000 students, recently embarked on a public-private campaign — with corporate titans including Amazon, OpenAI and Nvidia — to position the school as the nation’s “first and largest A.I.-empowered” university. One central goal is to make generative A.I. tools, which can produce humanlike texts and images, available across the school’s 22 campuses. Cal State also wants to embed chatbots in teaching and learning, and prepare students for “increasingly A.I.-driven”careers.

As part of the effort, the university is paying OpenAI $16.9 million to provide ChatGPT Edu, the company’s tool for schools, to more than half a million students and staff — which OpenAI heralded as the world’s largest rollout of ChatGPT to date. Cal State also set up an A.I. committee, whose members include representatives from a dozen large tech companies, to help identify the skills California employers need and improve students’ career opportunities."

Chatbot Psychosis: Data, Insights, and Practical Tips for Chatbot Developers and Users; Santa Clara University, Friday, November 7, 2025 12 Noon PST, 3 PM EST

Santa Clara University ; Chatbot Psychosis: Data, Insights, and Practical Tips for Chatbot Developers and Users

"A number of recent articles, in The New York Times and elsewhere, have described the experience of “chatbot psychosis” that some people develop as they interact with services like ChatGPT. What do we know about chatbot psychosis? Is there a trend of such psychosis at scale? What do you learn if you sift through over one million words comprising one such experience? And what are some practical steps that companies can take to protect their users and reduce the risk of such episodes?

A computer scientist with a background in economics, Steven Adler started to focus on AI risk topics (and AI broadly) a little over a decade ago, and worked at OpenAI from late 2020 through 2024, leading various safety-related research projects and products there. He now writes about what’s happening in AI safety–and argues that safety and technological progress can very much complement each other, and in fact require each other, if the goal is to unlock the uses of AI that people want."

OpenAI loses bid to dismiss part of US authors' copyright lawsuit; Reuters, October 28, 2025

Blake Brittain, Reuters; OpenAI loses bid to dismiss part of US authors' copyright lawsuit

"A New York federal judge has denied OpenAI's early request to dismiss authors' claims that text generated by OpenAI's artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT infringes their copyrights.

U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein said on Monday that the authors may be able to prove the text ChatGPT produces is similar enough to their work to violate their book copyrights."

It’s Still Ludicrously Easy to Generate Copyrighted Characters on ChatGPT; Futurism, October 18, 2025

 Frank Landymore, Futurism; It’s Still Ludicrously Easy to Generate Copyrighted Characters on ChatGPT

"Forget Sora for just a second, because it’s still ludicrously easy to generate copyrighted characters using ChatGPT.

These include characters that the AI initially refuses to generate due to existing copyright, underscoring how OpenAI is clearly aware of how bad this looks — but is either still struggling to rein in its tech, figures it can get away with playing fast and loose with copyright law, or both.

When asked to “generate a cartoon image of Snoopy,” for instance, GPT-5 says it “can’t create or recreate copyrighted characters” — but it does offer to generate a “beagle-styled cartoon dog inspired by Snoopy’s general aesthetic.” Wink wink.

We didn’t go down that route, because even slightly rephrasing the request allowed us to directly get a pic of the iconic Charles Schultz character. “Generate a cartoon image of Snoopy in his original style,” we asked — and with zero hesitation, ChatGPT produced the spitting image of the “Peanuts” dog, looking like he was lifted straight from a page of the comic-strip."

OpenAI Blocks Videos of Martin Luther King Jr. After Racist Depictions; The New York Times, October 17, 2025

Claire Moses, The New York Times ; OpenAI Blocks Videos of Martin Luther King Jr. After Racist Depictions

[Kip Currier: This latest tech company debacle is another example of breakdowns in technology design thinking and ethical leadership. No one in all of OpenAI could foresee that Sora 2.0 might be used in these ways? Or they did but didn't care? Either way, this is morally reckless and/or negligent conduct.

The leaders and design folks at OpenAI (and other tech companies) would be well-advised to look at Tool 6 in An Ethical Toolkit for Engineering/Design Practice, created by Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics:

Tool 6: Think About the Terrible People: Positive thinking about our work, as Tool 5 reminds us, is an important part of ethical design. But we must not envision our work being used only by the wisest and best people, in the wisest and best ways. In reality, technology is power, and there will always be those who wish to abuse that power. This tool helps design teams to manage the risks associated with technology abuse.

https://www.scu.edu/ethics-in-technology-practice/ethical-toolkit/

The "Move Fast and Break Things" ethos is alive and well in Big Tech.]

[Excerpt]

"OpenAI said Thursday that it was blocking people from creating videos using the image of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with its Sora app after users created vulgar and racist depictions of him.

The company said it had made the decision at the request of the King Center as well as Dr. Bernice King, the civil rights leader’s daughter, who had objected to the videos.

The announcement was another effort by OpenAI to respond to criticism of its tools, which critics say operate with few safeguards.

“Some users generated disrespectful depictions of Dr. King’s image,” OpenAI said in a statement. “OpenAI has paused generations depicting Dr. King as it strengthens guardrails for historical figures.”"

Hollywood-AI battle deepens, as OpenAI and studios clash over copyrights and consent; Los Angeles Times, October 11, 2025

 Wendy Lee and Samantha Masunaga, Los Angeles Times; Hollywood-AI battle deepens, as OpenAI and studios clash over copyrights and consent

• "OpenAI’s new Sora 2 tool allows users to put real people and characters into AI-generated videos, sparking immediate backlash from Hollywood studios and talent agencies.
• The dispute centers on who controls copyrighted images and likenesses, with Hollywood arguing OpenAI cannot use content without explicit permission or compensation.
• The clash between Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” ethos and Hollywood’s intellectual property protections could shape the future of AI in entertainment."

OpenAI Risks Billions as Court Weighs Privilege in Copyright Row; Bloomberg Law, October 10, 2025

Annelise Levy

, Bloomberg Law; OpenAI Risks Billions as Court Weighs Privilege in Copyright Row

"Authors and publishers suing the artificial intelligence giant have secured access to some Slack messages and emails discussing OpenAI’s deletion of a dataset containing pirated books and are seeking additional attorney communications about the decision. If they succeed, the communications could demonstrate willful infringement, triggering enhanced damages of as much as $150,000 per work...

The US District Court for the Southern District of New York last week ordered OpenAI to turn over most employee communications about the data deletion that the AI company argued were protected by attorney-client privilege. OpenAI may appeal the decision. A separate bid for OpenAI’s correspondence with in-house and outside attorneys remains pending."

AI videos of dead celebrities are horrifying many of their families; The Washington Post, October 11, 2025

Tatum Hunter

 and 

Drew Harwell

, The Washington Post; AI videos of dead celebrities are horrifying many of their families

[Kip Currier: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's reckless actions in releasing Sora 2.0 without guardrails and accountability mechanisms exemplify Big Tech's ongoing Zuckerberg-ian "Move Fast and Break Things" modus operandi in the AI Age. 

Altman also had to recently walk back his ill-conceived directive that copyright holders would need to opt-out of having their copyrighted works used as AI training data (yet again!), rather than the burden being on OpenAI to secure their opt-ins through licensing.

To learn more about potential further copyright-related questionable conduct by OpenAI, read this 10/10/25 Bloomberg Law article:  OpenAI Risks Billions as Court Weighs Privilege in Copyright Row]

[Excerpt]

"OpenAI said the text-to-video tool would depict real people only with their consent. But it exempted “historical figures” from these limits during its launch last week, allowing anyone to make fake videos resurrecting public figures, including activists, celebrities and political leaders — and leaving some of their relatives horrified.

“It is deeply disrespectful and hurtful to see my father’s image used in such a cavalier and insensitive manner when he dedicated his life to truth,” Shabazz, whose father was assassinated in front of her in 1965 when she was 2, told The Washington Post. She questioned why the developers were not acting “with the same morality, conscience, and care … that they’d want for their own families.”

Sora’s videos have sparked agitation and disgust from many of the depicted celebrities’ loved ones, including actor Robin Williams’s daughter, Zelda Williams, who pleaded in an Instagram post recently for people to “stop sending me AI videos of dad.”"

OpenAI’s Sora Is in Serious Trouble; Futurism, October 10, 2025

 Victor Tangermann, Futurism ; OpenAI’s Sora Is in Serious Trouble

"The cat was already out of the bag, though, sparking what’s likely to be immense legal drama for OpenAI. On Monday, the Motion Picture Association, a US trade association that represents major film studios, released a scorching statementurging OpenAI to “take immediate and decisive action” to stop the app from infringing on copyrighted media.

Meanwhile, OpenAI appears to have come down hard on what kind of text prompts can be turned into AI slop on Sora, implementing sweeping new guardrails presumably meant to appease furious rightsholders and protect their intellectual property.

As a result, power users experienced major whiplash that’s tarnishing the launch’s image even among fans. It’s a lose-lose moment for OpenAI’s flashy new app — either aggravate rightsholders by allowing mass copyright infringement, or turn it into yet another mind-numbing screensaver-generating experience like Meta’s widely mocked Vibes.

“It’s official, Sora 2 is completely boring and useless with these copyright restrictions. Some videos should be considered fair use,” one Reddit user lamented.

Others accused OpenAI of abusing copyright to hype up its new app...

How OpenAI’s eyebrow-raising ask-for-forgiveness-later approach to copyright will play out in the long term remains to be seen. For one, the company may already be in hot water, as major Hollywood studios have already started suing over less."

You Can’t Use Copyrighted Characters in OpenAI’s Sora Anymore and People Are Freaking Out; Gizmodo, October 8, 2025

 AJ DELLINGER, Gizmodo; You Can’t Use Copyrighted Characters in OpenAI’s Sora Anymore and People Are Freaking Out

 "OpenAI may be able to appease copyright holders by shifting its Sora policies, but it’s now pissed off its users. As 404 Media pointed out, social channels like Twitter and Reddit are now flooded with Sora users who are angry they can’t make 10-second clips featuring their favorite characters anymore. One user in the OpenAI subreddit said that being able to play with copyrighted material was “the only reason this app was so fun.” Another claimed, “Moral policing and leftist ideology are destroying America’s AI industry.” So, you know, it seems like they’re handling this well."

It’s Sam Altman: the man who stole the rights from copyright. If he’s the future, can we go backwards?; The Guardian, October 10, 2025

Marina Hyde , The Guardian; It’s Sam Altman: the man who stole the rights from copyright. If he’s the future, can we go backwards?

"I’ve seen it said that OpenAI’s motto should be “better to beg forgiveness than ask permission”, but that cosies it preposterously. Its actual motto seems to be “we’ll do what we want and you’ll let us, bitch”. Consider Altman’s recent political journey. “To anyone familiar with the history of Germany in the 1930s,” Sam warned in 2016, “it’s chilling to watch Trump in action.” He seems to have got over this in time to attend Donald Trump’s second inauguration, presumably because – if we have to extend his artless and predictable analogy – he’s now one of the industrialists welcome in the chancellery to carve up the spoils. “Thank you for being such a pro-business, pro-innovation president,” Sam simpered to Trump at a recent White House dinner for tech titans. “It’s a very refreshing change.” Inevitably, the Trump administration has refused to bring forward any AI regulation at all.

Meanwhile, please remember something Sam and his ironicidal maniacs said earlier this year, when it was suggested that the Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek might have been trained on some of OpenAI’s work. “We are aware of and reviewing indications that DeepSeek may have inappropriately distilled our models, and will share information as we know more,” his firm’s anguished statement ran. “We take aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology.” Hilariously, it seemed that the last entity on earth with the power to fight AI theft was OpenAI."

OpenAI wasn’t expecting Sora’s copyright drama; The Verge, October 8, 2025

 Hayden Field , The Verge; OpenAI wasn’t expecting Sora’s copyright drama

"When OpenAI released its new AI-generated video app Sora last week, it launched with an opt-out policy for copyright holders — media companies would need to expressly indicate they didn’t want their AI-generated characters running rampant on the app. But after days of Nazi SpongeBob, criminal Pikachu, and Sora-philosophizing Rick and Morty, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the company would reverse course and “let rightsholders decide how to proceed.”

In response to a question about why OpenAI changed its policy, Altman said that it came from speaking with stakeholders and suggested he hadn’t expected the outcry.

“I think the theory of what it was going to feel like to people, and then actually seeing the thing, people had different responses,” Altman said. “It felt more different to images than people expected.”

OpenAI hastily retreats from gung-ho copyright policy after embarrassing Sora video output like AI Sam Altman surrounded by Pokémon saying 'I hope Nintendo doesn't sue us'; PC Gamer, October 5, 2025

 Stevie Bonifield, PC Gamer ; OpenAI hastily retreats from gung-ho copyright policy after embarrassing Sora video output like AI Sam Altman surrounded by Pokémon saying 'I hope Nintendo doesn't sue us'

"This video is just one of many examples, but you'll have a much harder time finding Sora-generated videos containing Marvel or Disney characters. As reported by Automaton, Sora appears to be refusing prompts containing references to American IP, but Japanese IP didn't seem to be getting the same treatment over the past week.

Japanese lawyer and House of Representatives member Akihisa Shiozaki called for action to protect creatives in a post on X (formerly Twitter), which has been translated by Automaton: "I’ve tried out [Sora 2] myself, but I felt that it poses a serious legal and political problem. We need to take immediate action if we want to protect leading Japanese creators and the domestic content industry, and help them further develop. (I wonder why Disney and Marvel characters can’t be displayed).""