ChatGPT’s head of product, Nick Turley, has been enlisted as part of the witnesses to help the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) in its antitrust lawsuit against Google. The United States government, in its quest to prove that Google’s competitors are facing entry challenges, has turned to the ChatGPT executive. The agency wants Turley to testify, in hopes that it will help solidify its claims.

According to a ruling in August 2024, the court determined that Google held a monopoly in the search engine business. While Google has appealed the verdict, the United States DOJ is still hunting for penalties that the company should face. The DOJ wants several penalties ranging from placing a 10-year ban on the company from releasing any browser product or spinning off Chrome.

ChatGPT exec enlisted as the DOJ’s new witness

The Department of Justice (DOJ), in its bid to help its case against Google, has enlisted several competitors for help. Competitors like Perplexity, Microsoft, and OpenAI have been pulled into the legal tussle. It has also asked Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko to testify. However, it remains unknown if Shevelenko will be willing to testify in the case.

According to the filing, the exact date that Turley will testify has not been picked. However, it is expected that the DOJ will ask him about “generative AI’s relationship with Search Access Points, distribution, barriers to entry and expansion, and data sharing,” according to the document.

Google braces up for Turley’s testimony

Google also requested documents before the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, noting that the these documents may undermine Turley’s testimony regarding barriers to entry in a way that documents after the launch won’t. OpenAI noted that the old documents before ChatGPT’s launch will not offer any meaningful representation of the current AI landscape. The issue has put both sides in a struggle, with OpenAI urging the court to reject Google’s full scale of requested evidence.