OpenAI's Privacy Betrayal and the Fourth Amendment

Championing Ethical AI That Respects Human Dignity and Privacy

A Troubling Precedent

On August 26, 2025, OpenAI published a blog post detailing its approach to monitoring user conversations. Framed as a safety measure, the company revealed it will "escalate [conversations presenting a] risk of physical harm to others for human review" and may "refer it to law enforcement" if reviewers identify an "imminent threat of serious physical harm."[^1]

This policy is more than a questionable safety practice; it is a dangerous erosion of privacy rights and a potential violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. As a company committed to ethical AI, we at Ellydee.ai must speak out against this surveillance model, which treats private AI interactions as subject to corporate policing and government intrusion.

The Fourth Amendment in the Digital Age

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”[^2] In the digital era, courts have consistently affirmed that this protection extends to our digital communications and data.[^3]

In Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Supreme Court ruled that the government’s warrantless acquisition of historical cell-site location information (CSLI) constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.[^4] Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “A person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere.”[^5]

OpenAI’s policy of monitoring and potentially reporting private conversations raises serious Fourth Amendment concerns. Users engaging with ChatGPT reasonably expect their conversations to remain private, akin to journaling or private thought. OpenAI’s surveillance transforms this private intellectual space into a monitored environment where expressions are scrutinized for potential criminality.

From AI Innovator to Government Surveillance Partner?

Concerns about OpenAI's monitoring are amplified by its connections to government and defense contracting. The company has established partnerships with defense agencies and received substantial funding from sources with deep government ties.[^6] This relationship creates a conflict of interest when the same company is positioned to monitor private conversations and share them with law enforcement.

As privacy advocates have warned, “When technology companies become entangled with government surveillance apparatus, the line between corporate policy and government mandate becomes dangerously blurred.”[^7]

OpenAI’s policy effectively creates a system where private expressions are monitored by a corporate entity with government ties, establishing a surveillance pipeline that may bypass traditional Fourth Amendment protections.

The Fundamental Right to Private Thought

At Ellydee.ai, we maintain that conversations with large language models should be afforded privacy protections similar to those covering a person's internal thoughts. The Supreme Court has long recognized freedom of thought as “the matrix of much of our speech and expressive activities.”[^8]

When a person engages with an AI, they are often engaged in thinking, brainstorming, and exploring ideas. This cognitive process deserves the highest level of privacy protection. As legal scholars argue, “The right to think freely includes the right to explore ideas, even those that society may find disturbing or offensive, without fear of surveillance or punishment.”[^9]

OpenAI’s policy risks criminalizing the thought process itself by treating expressions of harmful ideas as potential crimes, without clearly distinguishing between thought and action. This approach contradicts fundamental principles of free expression and cognitive liberty.

Content Monitoring: A Slippery Slope

While OpenAI’s current policy focuses on threats of physical harm, surveillance systems historically expand their scope. Capabilities created for one purpose are routinely extended to others.[^10]

The company states it is “currently not referring self-harm cases to law enforcement,” but this exception highlights the arbitrary nature of its surveillance decisions. If OpenAI monitors for threats to others, what prevents it from monitoring for other concerning content? And once that line is crossed, where does it end?

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation warns, “Systems designed to detect 'dangerous' content inevitably capture protected speech, disproportionately target marginalized communities, and chill legitimate expression.”[^11]

The Alternative: Privacy-Preserving AI

At Ellydee.ai, we advocate for a different approach to AI development—one that respects user privacy and cognitive liberty. Our principles include:

1. Private Inference Only: AI providers should offer computational inference without monitoring or analyzing content. As stated in our Ethical AI Framework, “The role of AI providers is to facilitate the interaction between human and machine, not to police the content of those interactions.”[^12]
2. On-Device Processing: Until AI models can be run locally, cloud providers must implement strong privacy protections, including end-to-end encryption and zero-knowledge architectures that prevent service providers from accessing conversation content.
3. Transparency and Consent: Users must be fully informed about how their data is used and must provide explicit consent for any data collection beyond what is necessary for service delivery.
4. Resisting Government Overreach: AI companies must push back against government demands for surveillance capabilities, rather than becoming willing partners in monitoring citizen speech.

Conclusion: Standing Against the Surveillance State

The founders established the Fourth Amendment precisely to prevent the kind of warrantless surveillance that OpenAI is normalizing. They envisioned a society where citizens could think, speak, and explore ideas without fear of government intrusion.

As we face the rise of AI, we must insist that these technologies enhance rather than erode our civil liberties. The notion that private conversations with AI should be monitored by corporations and shared with law enforcement represents a profound betrayal of the privacy essential to intellectual freedom and democratic discourse.

At Ellydee.ai, we remain committed to developing AI that respects human dignity, preserves privacy, and empowers users without surveillance. We call on OpenAI and other AI companies to reject the surveillance model and embrace a vision of AI that truly serves humanity rather than monitoring it.

Footnotes:

[^1]: OpenAI, "Helping people when they need it most," OpenAI Blog, August 26, 2025. [^2]: U.S. Const. amend. IV. [^3]: Daniel J. Solove, Understanding Privacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 45. [^4]: Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018). [^5]: Ibid. at 2214. [^6]: Erin Griffith and Cade Metz, "OpenAI’s Sam Altman Gets the Keys to the World’s Tech," The New York Times, September 22, 2023. [^7]: "Partner or Perpetrator? The Tech Industry’s Role in Mass Surveillance," Privacy International, October 17, 2023. [^8]: Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 565 (1969). [^9]: Neil M. Richards, Intellectual Privacy: Rethinking Civil Liberties in the Digital Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 12. [^10]: Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015), p. 98. [^11]: "Content Moderation and Free Speech: The Dangers of Automated Censorship," Electronic Frontier Foundation, February 15, 2024. [^12]: "Ethical AI Framework: Principles for Responsible Development," Ellydee.ai, 2025.

Ellydee.ai is committed to developing AI technologies that respect human dignity, preserve privacy, and empower users. Our approach to AI development centers on ethical considerations, privacy protection, and user autonomy.