Lim v. OpenAI Global LLC

Published by Crandall Consulting · Informational litigation intelligence · Last substantive update: August 23, 2026

Docket / citation: Docket entry shows voluntary dismissal without prejudice on 2026-05-13 (no docket number provided in source)

Summary

A newsletter article summarizes a federal complaint captioned Lim v. OpenAI Global LLC filed in the Northern District of California alleging that ChatGPT web pages transmitted query-related data to Meta and Google via tracking technologies, invoking the Wiretap Act and California privacy laws. The docket shows a voluntary dismissal without prejudice on May 13, 2026, and there was no court ruling on the merits.

Litigation Status

Status, direction, and weight describe how tracked public sources characterize this matter as of our last review — they are informational classifications, not legal assessments.

Procedural Posture

Complaint filed in the Northern District of California alleging that OpenAI embedded Meta and Google tracking technologies into the ChatGPT website and that queries or query-related data were transmitted to adtech companies; complaint invoked the federal Wiretap Act, California Penal Code §§ 631 and 632, California constitutional invasion of privacy, and related common-law claims. Docket shows a voluntary dismissal without prejudice on 2026-05-13.

What the Court Did Not Decide

No merits ruling was reached; the docket shows a voluntary dismissal without prejudice, so the court did not resolve the factual or legal merits of the complaint.

Significance

Neutral / mixed significance. Characterizations of significance describe how the matter has generally been discussed in tracked public sources; individual holdings are often narrow, procedural, or fact-specific, and this page does not state or imply broader holdings than the sources support.

What This Page Does and Does Not Say

This page reports what our tracked public sources say about this matter — including, where identified, the procedural posture (for example, a ruling on a motion to dismiss is not a final merits decision). It does not report legal conclusions beyond those sources, does not predict outcomes, and does not constitute legal advice.

Technologies at Issue

• Meta Pixel
• Google Analytics
• third-party tracking code/pixels
• chatbot (ChatGPT) web interface

Third parties named or identified in tracked sources: OpenAI, Meta, Google.

Statutes Invoked

• Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Wiretap Act); California Penal Code § 631; California Penal Code § 632; California Constitution (invasion of privacy)

Claims Asserted

Claims identified in tracked public sources; pleadings may include additional or amended claims.

• Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Wiretap Act)
• California Penal Code § 631
• California Penal Code § 632
• California Constitution - invasion of privacy
• Common law intrusion upon seclusion
• Class action and statutory damages claims

What This Matter May Mean for Website Operators

For operators using similar technologies, the recurring factual questions in matters like this one are whether chat transcripts or typing previews transit a vendor's servers before the visitor presses send; whether advertising pixels transmit page URLs or hashed form data before a consent choice; what page URLs and query strings analytics tools share with third parties. Our scanner tests these behaviors empirically.

Detection of a similar technology on a website is an informational risk indicator, not a legal conclusion, and nothing in this section is legal advice.

Related Intelligence

Sources

• When a user communicated with ChatGPT, code placed on the website allegedly caused the browser to duplicate part of that communication to Meta or Google. — Pascal Hetzscholdt (beehiiv) · Tier E (General web) · 2026-05-15

About This Page

Publisher: Inspection-Ready Institute, Inc. (DBA Crandall Consulting), an independent website compliance and risk consultancy. We are not a law firm and nothing on this page is legal advice.

How this content is produced: Facts are extracted from publicly available sources — court and government materials, recognized legal press, professional analysis, and industry reports — by our litigation intelligence engine, stored with full source provenance, and rendered from the database. Risk guidelines are computed by a deterministic formula, never by an AI model directly. See the full methodology.

Limitations: Counts labeled "Tracked" reflect matters identified in our source set and are not official court statistics. We report what courts decided and did not decide; we do not predict outcomes.

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