One teenager’s attempt to make sense of a possible legal settlement didn’t just stay between him and ChatGPT—it ended up in a court file. The Washington Post‘s Miriam Waldvogel and Gerrit De Vynck report that the boy’s chats, part of a lawsuit he brought against Meta, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube over alleged social media addiction, are among a small but growing number of seemingly private AI conversations surfacing in civil and criminal cases. A Post review found chatbot logs cited in at least a dozen cases in the past two years, from vandalism and stalking prosecutions to business disputes over deleted emails.
The article details how police and lawyers are turning to chat histories as evidence, with OpenAI disclosing data from more than 80 accounts in the second half of 2025, a fourfold increase from the same period in 2024. That’s despite CEO Sam Altman’s call for the conversations to be given special legal protections, similar to talks with doctors or lawyers. Some experts see that as unlikely, raising questions about how much of our digital inner lives can be exposed in court. With chatbots, there’s “an atmosphere of privacy that encourages frank disclosure,” per the Post. One legal expert argues the chats offer “a window into the soul.” For the full set of examples and the legal stakes, read the original piece in the Post.