Urgent: GDPR Violation – No Export Option for ChatGPT Team Workspace Data

I am raising this post to reignite the critical discussion around the absence of a data export functionality for ChatGPT Team workspaces, as highlighted in this thread, which was closed on August 7, 2024, without resolution. This issue is not only frustrating for users but also potentially a violation of GDPR and other data protection regulations.

I, among apparently many other Team plan users, are left with “just copy-paste it” suggestions from the OpenAI Help Center and other help pages by default.

That is however, utterly unacceptable, since what we have here is a GDPR Violation (that affects Team plan users worldwide, not just i.e. in the EU):

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), users have:

  • Article 15 – Right of Access: The right to access all personal data stored by an organization.
  • Article 20 – Right to Data Portability: The right to receive personal data in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format (e.g., JSON, CSV).

Currently, ChatGPT Team users:

  1. Cannot export their data in any automated format, although this is (ridiculously enough) completely doable in Plus and even Pro plans, the latter of which being way more expensive than the Team and Plus plans combined.
  2. Face a one-way merging process of personal and Team workspaces, after which personal workspace data is permanently locked within the Team workspace.
  3. Risk losing access to all their work if the Team workspace is deactivated or their account is removed.

This effectively holds user data hostage and denies users their legal rights to retrieve it.

Lack of Transparency

There are several unacceptable oversights:

  • No proper warning that merging into a Team workspace makes data export impossible.
  • Irreversible merging locks users into a “walled garden” with no ability to reverse the process or retrieve data.
  • OpenAI customer support has suggested manual copy-pasting as a “solution” for data extraction, which is unrealistic and unprofessional for large datasets.

Impact on Users

Many of us upgraded to the Team plan for additional features, only to discover:

  • Core functionalities like data export are missing.
  • There’s no way to search, manage, or back up critical data within the Team workspace.

For professional and enterprise users who rely on these tools for significant projects, this creates:

  1. Loss of trust in OpenAI as a service provider.
  2. Operational risks due to lack of data access or portability.
  3. A growing sense that Team and Enterprise plans are designed to lock users into OpenAI’s ecosystem without recourse.

Proposed Resolution

To address these issues, OpenAI must:

  1. Implement a data export feature for Team workspaces, allowing users to download their data in a structured, machine-readable format (JSON/CSV).
  2. Provide clear warnings about irreversible workspace merging and its consequences.
  3. Outline a roadmap for resolving this long-standing issue, including timelines and progress updates.

Call to Action

I am urging OpenAI to:

  • Acknowledge the GDPR compliance issues raised by the lack of a data export feature.
  • Commit to delivering a fix or alternative solution promptly.
  • Reopen the dialogue with affected users and provide regular updates on progress.

This issue has persisted for nearly a year without resolution. As a long-time paying customer, I believe OpenAI has an obligation to respect its users’ rights and maintain transparency in its operations.


Furthermore, if OpenAI does not do anything to address this situation, and since my data is locked inside the Team plan right now (a year’s worth of work), I’m willing to file a DPA notice in the EU regarding the lack of data export in Team plans.

By EU law, the lack of an export option in the Team plan is essentially withholding the user’s data (which is considered as their property) under direct violation of GDPR’s Article 15 and 20.

Under the EU’s data protection laws, this type of violation is punishable by up to 20 million EUR in fines or 4% of revenue, whichever is higher. I strongly urge OpenAI to act before this matter escalates further.


I encourage other users to share their experiences below and amplify this issue. Together, we can hold OpenAI accountable for these shortcomings and demand the transparency and functionality we deserve.

Thanks.

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Did you ask support for an export? GDPR does not say anything about an export functionality in form of a button.

And first of all you can access all data when you log into it. Please calm down.

Did you ask support for an export?

Yes I did, their help center told me to use copy-paste if I wanted my data out, exactly as people had stated in the now-closed thread.

GDPR does not say anything about an export functionality in form of a button.

Wrong.

a) Article 15 (Right of Access): Under GDPR, you have the right to obtain a copy of all personal data your organization holds concerning yourself.

b) Article 20 (Right to Data Portability): You are also entitled to receive this data in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format (e.g., JSON, CSV).

And first of all you can access all data when you log into it.

Wrong again. I got a mail from OpenAI that clearly stated “you will lose access to your workspace…”, unless I pay up.

Please calm down.

Have I been something other than calm? Please stop whitewashing the issue of a gross corporate lock-in of user data, thank you.

Can you show me the part that says you are entitled to a button to click on to get that.

Article 20 states that it has to be in machine readable format. Since we got transformer model now everything is machine readable :smile: - and html is also commonly used.

Is it a lot to copy and paste?

Can you show me the part that says you are entitled to a button to click on to get that.

Not directly, but as it’s interpreted, larger data sets should be able to be exported with out hindrance from the service provider. Facebook has data exports, even Google’s free services often have data export features within a single click. Not to mention that the data export behind a single button is available in Plus and Pro plans. So, what’s the rationale for that, since the export via a single button already exists in these other plans, but OpenAI has decided on a data lock-in with their Team plan?

Also, do you see something bad be demanding your own data out of a service that you’ve paid for that’s threatening to take away your access to the workspace and the data within it unless you pay up?

Yes. A year’s worth of work, thousands of sessions.

You can see how well other people have been taking the lack of export function from i.e. this now-closed thread: Export Chats in ChatGPT-Team

Sounds expensive to me. So, who is going to pay for that? OpenAI?

Are you looking for a service provider that does that?

Yes. It should be their duty under their services, since they’re operating in the EU. Not to mention that this affects all Team plan users worldwide, so I don’t see anything negative in the feature being available to users worldwide. Or are you here shilling for a complete lock-in of user data and making data exports as hard as possible?

Again: it’s not expensive if OpenAI would implement the same data export feature they have for i.e. Plus and Pro plans, so please stop the trolling already.

Why is the feature lacking from the Team plan and whether it’s a deliberate lock-in strategy or just negligence, is anybody’s guess.

Yes, it’s called OpenAI.

Are we done here?

I am just pushing the thread to the top for awareness… sorry for that…

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I see. Thank you for your time then, and I hope you have a nice day. :slight_smile:

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Just a little sidenote:

This is a graph represenation over time of the development on a software project.

It is perfectly possible to do something alike with chatgpt chats as well (when you have the export) - In combination with timestamps connected to each chat obvisously… but overall there should be a graph representation visualized and all the chats that belong together because they are about the same topic should be connected - and they can even be reduced because of redundant information…

The problem with the export of team data - even if the laws provide that right is that teams will mostly be used by companies and they can have a nice visualisation of what is going on in the brain of their employees with such a tool… and furthermore it is most likely also possible to find patterns for psychological deficites and even a IQ value should be extractable… So I would say it is quiet disturbing what the GDPR opens here. I would rather want a change in the law than an OpenAI that allows such downloads…

I might be wrong here, but as I recall OpenAI has something stated that the employer has no acces to the employees data. They have their own account, which they should be able to get acces to. On the other hand I also understand that companies can’t have employees taking company data with a single click if they decide to “turn rogue”.

However there does seem to be a big problem here where to my knowledge there isn’t a one sided answer to. I have a small company with a teams subscription and I also want to have my data, not to get out but as a backup. I do this with almost any online platform, kind of a digital hoarder you might say. But also I have full consent of my employees to acces this data, they don’t use it for personal things.

Your point on using data for employee analysis is indeed problematic but that is something that is regulated, at least where I’m from. It is illegal to use data in this way in order to discriminate. They might do it with other data as well, though OpenAI is on an even more personal level. On the other hand threathening users to lock them out upon making changes of paymentplans without a dataset opt out is a clear violation of GDPR regulations and is quite concerning as well.

I won’t say there is a clear or right answer, maybe an export requested by the employee being cleared by the company might be a valid option? In any case it is quite worrysome on both ends. Seems like we need to start thinking in new ways on how to use these programs.

That being said, I think it is OpenAI’s obligation to clearly inform the potential subscriber on ALL possibilities and limitations of such plans. I subscribed to teams 8 months ago and searched for this information beforehand for a long time to no avail. On limited information I still decided to get a plan and had the same problem trying to export my data afterward. Nor could I find any official information on why that wasn’t possible. Luckily I didn’t merge my personal free plan (just to keep a tidier workspace) but on reading this I believe they shouldn’t have this option at all and clearly inform the users upon using team plans and the limitations due to… whatever their intent is.

Conclusion to me is that OpenAI is very bad at communicating, in lots of ways. This community has offered some help but I’m looking for official help. I pay for it and they should provide solutions.

Thanks @jochenschultz btw for taking me out of a one sided view on the matter. This does make it allot clearer to me. But still, I’d like an easy way to get my companies data.

Thanks @FlyingFathead for raising awareness. I read your substack because nobody seemed to be talking about this. However @jochenschultz has a point. Jumping to conclusions and filing complaints might be a bit to rash but @OpenAI should communicate clearly AND offer sollutions.

I gather @OpenAI won’t be reading this and a complaint and won’t help us resolve this issue so maybe a complaint with the EU mediator is the only solution on at least gatthering attention to this matter.

5 posts were split to a new topic: Discussion about the ChatGPT export

First of all, thank you for reading my blog post. :slight_smile: I highly appreciate it.

(FYI to others, the blog post is at HELP! OpenAI’s ChatGPT Team Plan Just Took All Of My Data As Hostage! | by Harry Horsperg | Jan, 2025 | Medium on Medium or HELP! OpenAI's ChatGPT Team Plan Just Took All Of My Data As Hostage! on Substack)

I agree that preventing unauthorized data exports is a valid security concern, especially for enterprise-level customers who want to protect their IP from departing and/or possibly rogue employees. However, in my situation, and what many Team Plan subscribers have encountered – the lack of a proper data export function is problematic in multiple ways:

  1. I’m not trying to export confidential corporate IP belonging to someone else, not even inside my Team plan. I’m a paying customer who owns the particular Team account, and I want to retrieve my own data from the workspace that I’ve paid for, and want to get out of, now that the annual contract has expired.

  2. When ChatGPT Team plan was first introduced, it was literally pitched to power users who needed higher usage limits. At that time, the Team or Enterprise plans were the main routes to scale usage (unless you got yourself into a hustle with multiple Plus accounts). Many of us ended up with large amounts of our content: code, creative writing, translations; hence, stuck in a Team workspace.

  3. Add to this the one-way workspace merging: Currently, personal ChatGPT workspaces (Free/Plus/Pro) can be merged into a Team workspace. But once merged, that content cannot be moved back out or exported without manual copy-paste, which is a completely ridiculous task your work involves excessive amounts of code and text.

Like said: this effectively becomes a “roach motel” for data: it checks in, but it can’t check out.

As for GDPR & other regulatory issues, under the the GDPR (and similar legislation elsewhere), organizations must provide users with a way to obtain their personal data in a standard, machine-readable format. Even if we set aside EU-specific regulations, plenty of jurisdictions have consumer protection or digital rights laws that require a service provider to offer a straightforward way to retrieve your data.

The Team plan’s missing export button directly contradicts the export functionality present in the personal/Plus/Pro tiers, and thus, it’s baffling why the Team plan would have fewer data rights than both a cheaper tier (Plus) and a more expensive one (Pro), especially for the contact person or project manager or whoever that had bought and paid for the plan.

If the rationale is to prevent employees from walking off with a company’s proprietary data, a more precise solution would be to let the organization owner or admin control who can or cannot export data, but instead, the current approach is “no exports whatsoever”, which is… extraordinary at the very least.

IMHO, it punishes legitimate owners/customers who simply want access to their own material, and again, might be extremely problematic if not downright in violation of not just i.e. GDPR (as mixing your personal data with your Team workspace is made extremely easy), but also very troublesome in terms of basic consumer rights, business practices and ethics.

As it stands, the current implementation reeks of a predatory SaaS customer data lock-in strategy, and for sure isn’t looking very good for a company that claims the “democratization of AI” as their main objective, etc.

This whole limitation can also backfire on a genuine project manager who needs to gather the team’s deliverables or re-use them in a new project. With no workable export option, they’re stuck doing manual copy-pastes, defeating the entire purpose of a collaboration-friendly AI platform.

With all this said, I hope OpenAI looks into this some day and actually fixes the issue in a sensible way.

Wishing you all the best and a nice day. :slight_smile:

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It’s not like the export in normal plus accounts works at the moment… at least it didn’t the last ~20 days.

I have the exact same problem.

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My data is now being held hostage
I have no way to switch to the Plus or Pro plan
And if I cancel my Team plan subscription to create a new account with the Plus/Pro plan, I will lose all my data.

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If it’s of any comfort, at least you’re not alone. :slight_smile:

I’ve received a mail from OpenAI that they’re “looking into it”, but that’s a non-existent promise for anything; I’d suggest just copypasting or scripting the data you really want or need – preferably with a copypaste method where you actually keep the formatting. OpenAI’s reply of “looking into it” doesn’t guarantee anything.

ChatGPT’s entire website is such a JavaScript cesspool from hell that in many cases it makes DIY automated exports pretty unusable, especially if you want to keep the formatting – this is regardless of what kind of a scripting solution you come up with.

There are some export scripting methods (such as using a bookmark script etc) mentioned in this now-closed thread: Export Chats in ChatGPT-Team – although the website has changed many times since those were posted, so many of the examples no longer work.

A quick copypaste setup/macro is probably the best solution you can hope for at the moment.

I do recommend contacting OpenAI’s Help Center directly at https://help.openai.com/ and mentioning that this is completely unacceptable (and possibly a GDPR violation) – maybe if a critical number of users raise some noise about this, things will change. I know; wishful thinking, but at least you’ve made your voice heard.

Best of luck to you.

very strong +1 as a 1-year Team subscriber (unwillingly, for much of that year). Thank you for listing each issue with the plan / this experience and for voicing your concerns about those issues as thoroughly as you have.

+1 This is absolutely ridiculous that you can’t export your own data and I’m going to be canceling my Teams subscription due to this. There is absolutely no way I’m letting OpenAI continue to hold my data hostage.