She definitely knows, she’s just trying to avoid any chance of future litigation by feigning ignorance. Makes sense since OpenAI’s been getting a lot of bad press for using copyright data in training their models.
If someone asks an executive whether they do something illegal, and they reply that they don’t know; does it really protect them from anything or does it simply show negligence?
It protects the company, admission is pretty much asking for a law suite.
For these companies it’s especially important since even if copyright claims will come down the line they need to become big enough to be able to push back on them so they could force a favorable settlement.
Calling it "lot of bad press" seems like an overstatement (maybe looking through hn tinted glasses). Overall, I do not get the impression that people care super much relativ to the overall public interest in everything OpenAI.
I would be shocked if there weren't, being a company with over hundred millions users, that is in the process of reshaping the world (for better or worse).
Being sued in general is not that great of an indicator for anything, in a world filled with lawyers and angry people.