Last month, OpenAI came out against a yet-to-be enacted Californian law that aims to set basic safety standards for developers of large artificial intelligence (AI) models. This was a change of posture for the company, whose chief executive Sam Altman has previously spoken in support of AI regulation.

The former nonprofit organization, which shot to prominence in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, is now valued at up to US$150 billion. It remains at the forefront of AI development, with the release last week of a new "reasoning" model designed to tackle more complex tasks.

The company has made several moves in recent months suggesting a growing appetite for data acquisition. This isn't just the text or images used for training current generative AI tools, but may also include intimate data related to online behavior, personal interactions and health.

There is no evidence OpenAI plans to bring these different streams of data together, but doing so would offer strong commercial benefits. Even the possibility of access to such wide-ranging information raises significant questions about privacy and the ethical implications of centralized data control.

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