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# Lawsuit Claims Contractors for OpenAI Are Reading Users' Chats.
- URL: https://macanorak.com/lawsuit-claims-contractors-for-openai-are-reading-users-chats-2/
- Published: 2026-09-28T07:06:02.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-28T18:13:41.000Z
- Description: OpenAI is being accused of routing some ChatGPT prompts to contractors who read, summarise and score them.
- Author: MacAnorak
- Tags: Sightings

Well, here's a doozy. A new lawsuit against OpenAI claims that human contractors are reading users' ChatGPT chats.

*Vredenburgh v. OpenAI OpCo, LLC*, No. 3:26-cv-10527, was filed on September 16, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco.

The nub of the issue is this: OpenAI is being accused of routing some ChatGPT prompts and conversations to outside contractors who are tasked with reading them, summarising them [\[1\]](#fn1), and scoring the chatbot's answers. [\[2\]](#fn2)

The disarmingly benign-sounding ‘Project Lily’ is OpenAI’s internal code name for program, according to [404 Media](https://www.404media.co/inside-project-lily-the-humans-reading-your-chatgpt-chats/?ref=macanorak.com) who conducted an investigation and broke the story.

The contractors are recruited through a staffing firm called “Crossing Hurdles” (read: *circumventing guardrails*) for jobs such as: *“AI Data Reviewer”*, and *“Chatbot Evaluator”*. Once recruited, the contractor is shown a real user's prompt (which is often an entire conversation), then tasked with writing a short summary of what the user wanted (for example, *"I need help with ChatGPT violating my privacy”)*; they then read some of ChatGPT’s responses and flag up passages that either match or don't match the behaviour OpenAI is aiming for. They have to score each response from 1-7 [\[3\]](#fn3) and have to detail a rationale.What a fun job that must be. (And score according to what metric — how ingratiating the chatbot is; how much it manages to keep the user engaged?)

OpenAI is said to run conversations through a ‘Privacy Filter’ model before reviewers see them. OpenAI told 404 Media that, *“like all models, privacy filter can make mistakes, it can miss uncommon identifiers or ambiguous private references, and it can over- or under-redact entities when context is limited”*. OpenAI's own [published documentation](https://github.com/openai/privacy-filter?ref=macanorak.com) for the tool is hardly more reassuring. It describes a Privacy Filter as *“a redaction and a data minimization aid, not an anonymization, compliance, or safety guarantee”*. You couldn't make this stuff up.

The complaint also alleges that the contractor is shown a summary of the user's past ChatGPT use, which can easily reveal a name or where the user lives, even though some of the user’s prompts specifically ask ChatsGPT to keep what they say confidential. OpenAI does have a [Help Center article](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7039943-data-usage-for-consumer-services-faq?ref=macanorak.com): *“How OpenAI handles data in consumer services”*, which says that *“a limited number of authorised OpenAI personnel, as well as trusted service providers… may access user content only as needed… to improve model performance (unless you have opted out)”*. [\[4\]](#fn4) The plaintiff's case is about whether that disclosure was adequate and where it appeared.

There's a lot more to this story which I highly recommend [checking out](https://openclassactions.com/lawsuits/privacy/openai-chatgpt-human-review-project-lily-class-action-lawsuit.php?ref=macanorak.com) — you even can read the full complaint if you have a few hours to kill and are that way inclined.

OpenAI have not yet responded in court and none of the allegations have been proven.

---

1. A perfect use case for Apple’s Visual / Audio Intelligence features perhaps? See my Field Notes: [Watch What You Say](https://macanorak.com/watch-what-you-say/), and [Don’t Worry, They’re Not Really Cameras](https://macanorak.com/dont-worry-theyre-not-really-cameras/). [↩︎](#fnref1)
2. Anthropic told 404 Media that it runs a similar human-review process for Claude — the key difference being that Anthropic's process applies only to users who've opted in, rather than being on by default as per ChatGPT's settings. [↩︎](#fnref2)
3. "Not 1–5, not 1–10, but ‘1 to 7’ — a scale precise enough to feel scientific, and arbitrary enough that someone in a meeting said *"let's not overthink this"* right before choosing it [↩︎](#fnref3)
4. ChatGPT has a data-control setting labelled *“Improve the model for everyone.”* I have this turned off, obviously. [↩︎](#fnref4)