> we did not read any private chats

Your post says “While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models .” We can discuss what it means to “read” things but obviously the issue here isn't whether you did it manually or automatically.

But more importantly, what on earth are you doing threatening real scientists to remove their coauthors, then making fun of them on social media? Does the entire company run on that toxic culture, or did those people run off of some kind of outrageous tangent?

If the training toggle is switched on, maybe OpenAI doesn't consider a chat to be private? Therefore making this a 'safe' statement.

Except that’s not what happened. OpenAI offered to collaborate and put conditions on their offer. They aren’t threatening the removal of a coauthor for an independent work.