The US government wants to prove that Google’s competitors face high barriers to entry as part of its antitrust case against the tech giant. So it turned to ChaptGPT’s head of product, Nick Turley, to testify as a witness in the hope that he would help strengthen its case.

At a landmark ruled in Augustthe court determined that Google had a search monopoly. While Google is appealing this decision, the Department of Justice is now asking the court to decide what sanctions it should face, such as spinning in Chrome or a 10-year ban on the release of any browser product.

To bolster its case, the DOJ pulled out various Google competitors such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity. It wants specific executives, like Perplexity’s Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko, to testify. (It’s not yet clear whether Shevelenko will do so. Confusion did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Recent legal filings confirm that a top executive from OpenAI, Nick Turley, head of product for ChatGPT, will testify as a witness in the case of the US government.

“Mr. Turley is a witness chosen by the Plaintiffs (the DOJ) to testify on behalf of OpenAI,” Google’s lawyers wrote on January 16 legal filing.

“Mr. Turley is the OpenAI witness who will testify for the government at the Evidentiary Hearing, ” another filing from January 16 read.

None of the filings specified when Turley would testify. Turley is expected to be questioned in the US about “generative AI’s relationship with Search Access Points, distribution, barriers to entry and expansion, and data sharing,” per filing. The DOJ did not provide details on what Turley wanted to ask. (These are the exact same topics want to ask CBO’s Perplexity about.)

The DOJ uses the term “search access points” to refer to products like Google Chrome that people use to search the web. Note, in October 2024, ChatGPT launched own AI search browser.

To prepare itself for Turley’s testimony, Google subpoenaed OpenAI for documents related to the case. But the two companies are now in a heated dispute over the extent of the evidence OpenAI should provide.

In a legal filing on January 16, Google criticized OpenAI for producing “too few documents.” OpenAI’s lawyers refused, citing Google’s demands for documents from top executives like CEO Sam Altman as a “Trojan horse intended to harass OpenAI executives.”

OpenAI agreed to share some documents from Turley’s work files about OpenAI’s strategy in AI products, the integration of AI in search-related products, and the partnership with Microsoft, a letter from what OpenAI lawyers have shown.

Google said it needed more documents from several executives, because trusting Turley would “damage Google” because Turley was a “handpicked” witness by the US government, according to the filing.

Google also wants documents from OpenAI ahead of the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, Claims it “may undermine Mr. Turley’s testimony about barriers to entry in a way that post-launch documents would not.” But OpenAI says that the old documents “do not meaningfully represent” the current AI landscape.

Both sides showed an inconclusive and OpenAI asked the court to reject the full extent of Google’s requested evidence.

OpenAI and Google did not respond to requests for comment. The DOJ declined to comment.

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