Anthropic asks judge to compel OpenAI to show how it handles deleted Reddit posts

#What happened

Anthropic filed a motion to compel on September 21, 2026, naming OpenAI OpCo, LLC as a nonparty in Reddit's lawsuit against Anthropic (San Francisco Superior Court, case CGC-25-625892). The motion seeks further responses and production on 25 of the 34 document requests in a subpoena served June 16; a hearing is listed for November 12, 2026, at 9 a.m., Department 302.

#The motion

Anthropic filed a motion to compel on September 21, 2026, targeting OpenAI OpCo, LLC as a nonparty in Reddit's lawsuit against Anthropic (San Francisco Superior Court, case CGC-25-625892). The motion seeks further responses and production on 25 of the 34 document requests in a subpoena served June 16. A hearing is listed for November 12, 2026, at 9 a.m., Department 302.

#What Anthropic wants

Five requests (Nos. 28-32) focus on deletion: records of OpenAI's implementation of Reddit's Compliance API, deletion-event logs or summaries, evidence of deletion or suppression across systems, datasets, products, and customer-facing outputs after Reddit deletion events, records of failures, outages, delays, and backlogs, complaints about failures to delete, and whether Reddit content can be removed or suppressed from models that have already been trained.

#What the filing does not prove

The filing identifies records Anthropic wants; it does not show that OpenAI mishandled deleted posts or that its models can retain deleted content. Removing a post from an application is a different operation from removing it from a training dataset, and suppressing an answer in a product is different from changing model weights.

#Background

OpenAI and Reddit announced a partnership in May 2024, giving OpenAI access to Reddit's Data API and bringing Reddit content into ChatGPT and other products. Reddit's lawsuit argues its licensing terms and Compliance API require licensees to honor user deletions; Anthropic's motion seeks to test how those obligations actually operate against OpenAI's conduct as Reddit's named licensee.

#Why it matters

Reddit's lawsuit argues its licensing terms and Compliance API require licensees to honor user deletions; Anthropic's motion seeks to test how those obligations actually operate against OpenAI's conduct as Reddit's named licensee. The responses will show whether deleted Reddit posts are removed or suppressed across OpenAI's systems, datasets, products, and models, or whether they persist.

Source: https://runtimewire.com/article/anthropic-wants-openai-to-show-its-work-on-deleted-reddit-posts

Verified October 4, 2026.