The U.S. government wants to prove that Google’s competitors face overwhelming barriers to entry as part of its antitrust case against the tech giant. So the company is turning to Nick Turley, head of product at ChapterGPT, to testify as a witness in the hope that it will help strengthen its case.
In a landmark ruling last August, the court ruled that Google has a monopoly on search. Google has appealed the decision, and the Justice Department is now asking the court to decide what penalties it should impose, including a Chrome spinoff and a 10-year ban on releasing any browser products.
To strengthen its case, the Justice Department brought in various Google competitors, including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity. The company is seeking testimony from certain executives, such as Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shebelenko. (It is not yet clear whether Mr. Shevelenko will do so. Perplexity did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
A recent legal filing confirms that a top OpenAI executive, Nick Turley, head of product at ChatGPT, will testify as a witness in the US government’s case.
“Mr. Turley is a witness hand-picked by Plaintiffs (the Department of Justice) to testify on behalf of OpenAI,” Google’s lawyers said in a Jan. 16 legal filing.
“Mr. Turley is an OpenAI witness testifying on behalf of the government at evidentiary hearings,” another Jan. 16 filing said.
None of the filings specify exactly when Mr. Turley will testify. Turley will be asked questions from the U.S. about “the relationship between generative AI and search access points, distribution, barriers to entry and expansion, and data sharing,” according to the filing. The Justice Department has not provided details on what it wants to ask Turley. (These are the exact topics you’ll want to ask Perplexity’s CBO.)
The Department of Justice uses the term “search access point” to refer to products such as Google Chrome that people use to search the web. Notably, in October 2024, ChatGPT launched its own AI search browser.
In preparation for Turley’s testimony, Google has issued a subpoena to OpenAI requesting documents related to the case. However, the two companies are currently engaged in a heated dispute over the scope of evidence that OpenAI should provide.
In a Jan. 16 lawsuit, Google criticized OpenAI for producing “shockingly little documentation.” OpenAI lawyers fired back, saying Google’s document requests from top executives like CEO Sam Altman appeared to be a “Trojan horse designed to harass OpenAI executives.” .
According to a letter from OpenAI’s lawyers, OpenAI has agreed to share some documents from Turley’s work file regarding OpenAI’s strategy for AI products, the integration of AI into search-related products, and its partnership with Microsoft. .
According to the filing, Google is seeking further documents from more executives because relying too much on Mr. Turley would be “to Google’s detriment” because he is a “hand-picked” witness by the U.S. government. states that it is necessary.
Google is also seeking documents from OpenAI that predate ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022, and that these documents “undermine Mr. Turley’s testimony on barriers to entry in a way that post-launch documents do not.” It is possible.” But OpenAI says the old documents “cannot meaningfully represent” the current state of AI.
Both sides have reached an impasse, with OpenAI asking the court to reject the entire range of evidence requested by Google.
OpenAI and Google did not respond to requests for comment. The Justice Department declined to comment.
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