“OpenAI, despite its name, has not been transparent about what it has been trained on.”
Our reading, the sentence that was checked:
OpenAI has not been transparent about its training data.
Assessment: Supported Evidence as of
Where and when Gary Marcus wrote it
Marcus on AI, Things are about to get a lot worse for Generative AI, paragraph 19.
- Said
- Source observed
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence as of
- the cutoff for this assessment
- Assessment recorded
- assessment marcus-things-are-about-to-get-a-lot-worse-1c64d7-a1
We recorded 14 claims from this post. See every claim from this post.
The wording above is the version this site observed on 2026-10-29. The source may have been edited after 2023-12-29. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.
What the claim commits to
- Kind
- Observation
- Deadline, as the speaker wrote it
- None stated. This site does not add one.
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Deadline state on 2026-10-29
- No horizon (the release’s reference date)
From the speaker
- OpenAI
- has not been transparent
- what it has been trained on
Our interpretation
- Transparency means identifying substantive training sources sufficiently for outsiders to understand what material was used. It does not require publishing every training example.
- The claim concerns OpenAI's then-current generative models, particularly GPT-4 and DALL-E 3.
- For this ongoing state, the reporting window is the latest calendar quarter through the post: October 1–December 29, 2023. Earlier documentation is context.
Counts as supported if: Contemporary documentation supplies broad training-data categories while withholding substantive information identifying the underlying sources.
Counts as contradicted if: Contemporary public disclosures substantially identify the training sources for the models discussed.
Retrospective: these criteria were written after the outcome was public.
Current assessment
Was it true for the period described?
Outcome: Supported
The dated evidence matches what the claim committed to, under the criteria frozen before grading.
Scored on a plain reading. The speaker named no measure for this claim, so it was judged on the reading an informed reader would take, stated below under our interpretation. Both reviews had to find that reading fair.
- Evidence as of
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Assessment recorded
- Policy version
- 2026-10-28.7
Rationale
OpenAI described broad categories of training material without substantially identifying the underlying sources. The contemporary DALL-E 3 system card supports Marcus's ordinary claim of limited transparency. It also limits that conclusion: OpenAI did disclose some information about its data and filtering.
Limitations
- Transparency has no numerical threshold in the claim.
- This finding concerns substantive source disclosure for the models discussed, not every OpenAI model.
- The system-card availability date refers to the original publication, not the undated reproduction.
Evidence (2 items)
Supports the claim: OpenAI; reproduced at dalle-3.pages.dev,
publicly available and licensed sources
Why it matters here: The system card describes broad source categories and filtering methods but does not identify the underlying training corpus or its substantive source inventory. This supports limited transparency, not an assertion that OpenAI disclosed nothing.
- Publisher
- OpenAI; reproduced at dalle-3.pages.dev
- Kind of source
- Company disclosure: the company describing itself, not an independent finding
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: OpenAI,
capabilities, limitations, and safety properties
Why it matters here: The surrounding section describes public and licensed data, then expressly withholds further dataset-construction details for competitive and safety reasons. It predates the target quarter and supplies historical context.
- Publisher
- OpenAI
- Kind of source
- Company disclosure: the company describing itself, not an independent finding
- Describes events of
- Public from
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the sources this register covers.
: Marcus on AI, Things are about to get a lot worse for Generative AI
OpenAI, despite its name, has not been transparent about what it has been trained on.
- Where
- paragraph 19
- Published
- 2023-12-29
- Source observed
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Assessment versions
- Assessment marcus-things-are-about-to-get-a-lot-worse-1c64d7-a1: Current. Outcome: Supported. Evidence as of 2026-10-28. Public date not recorded.
Recorded events
Assessment publishedBy this site
First assessment published after both reviews and the final-text check passed.
About assessment marcus-things-are-about-to-get-a-lot-worse-1c64d7-a1.