ChatGPT development head to testify in US government case against Google

In a landmark decision last August, the court ruled that Google has a monopoly on search, TechCrunch recalls. While Google appeals the decision, the Justice Department is asking the court to determine what sanctions the company should face, such as spinning off Chrome or a 10-year ban on making any browser products.

To bolster its case, the Justice Department included several Google competitors, including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity, in the case. He wants specific executives to testify, such as Perplexity’s director of business development, Dmitry Shevelenko.

It is unknown whether Shevelenko will take this step, but OpenAI senior manager Nick Turley, head of the ChatGPT product department, will definitely testify as a witness in the US government case.

In a series of court filings dated January 16, are the following confirmations of his consent: “Mr. Turley is a witness selected by the plaintiffs. [Министерством юстиции США] testify on behalf of OpenAI”; “Mr. Turley is an OpenAI witness who will testify on behalf of the government at the evidentiary hearing.” But the date of his appearance is unknown.

Turley is expected to be asked about “generative AI’s relationship to search hotspots, distribution, barriers to entry and expansion, and data sharing,” according to the document. The Justice Department did not provide details about what it wants to ask Turley. They plan to ask similar questions to Perplexity’s chief legal officer.

The Department of Justice uses the term “search points” to refer to products like Google Chrome that people use to search the Internet. Notably, in October 2024, ChatGPT launched its own AI browser.

To prepare for Turley’s testimony, Google requested documents related to the case from OpenAI. But the two companies are now locked in a bitter dispute over the scope of testing OpenAI should provide.

In a legal filing filed on January 16, Google criticized OpenAI for providing “surprisingly few documents.” OpenAI’s lawyers responded that Google’s document requests to senior managers generally appear to be a “Trojan horse designed to harass OpenAI executives.”

Still, the developer agreed to share some documents from Turley’s working files on OpenAI’s strategy for AI products, the integration of AI into search-related products, and its partnership with Microsoft.

But that didn’t sit well with Google, which says it needs more documents from more executives because relying primarily on Turley “would be disadvantageous to Google” because Turley is a government witness.

Google also wants documents from OpenAI that were compiled before the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, arguing that they “may undermine the credibility of Mr. Turley’s testimony about barriers to entry compared to documents compiled after the launch.” But OpenAI says older documents “may not reliably reflect” the current AI landscape.