Erin Illman Quoted in Cybernews on OpenAI's Need to Respect Privacy Expectations

Bradley attorney Erin Illman was quoted in Cybernews discussing concern that a court order requiring OpenAI to hand over 20 million ChatGPT conversations to New York Times lawyers could undermine users’ trust in the platform’s privacy protections.

She noted a blurry line between what data can be legitimately requested in legal cases and what users reasonably expect to remain private. “Ultimately, the risk is that the outcome fails to balance the privacy expectations of individuals who had no reason to believe this information would be provided to a third party… against the reasonable need to defend a business,” Illman said.

Illman emphasized that while defending a company’s rights is valid, it should not come at the expense of user privacy. She warned that users’ trust could be damaged because they never agreed to have their conversations broadly shared in a legal dispute.

The full article, “Should users worry about NYT asking to turn over ChatGPT logs?,” was published by Cybernews on Nov. 15, 2025.