ChatGPT will remember everything about you, but not in Europe yet

OpenAI has improved ChatGPT's ability to remember more information about you.

On Thursday, the AI startup said via X that "ChatGPT can now reference all of your past chats to provide more personalised responses." There was already a memory setting that, when enabled, allowed ChatGPT to remember saved memories and use them in discussions. But now, ChatGPT can recall even more. "In addition to the saved memories that were there before, it can now reference your past chats to deliver responses that feel noticeably more relevant and useful," Open AI said in the X forum.

So, even if users haven't expressly instructed ChatGPT to remember something, it may now "reference past conversations automatically."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman foreshadowed the announcement this morning, saying on X, "a few times a year I wake up early and can't fall back asleep because we're launching a new feature I've been so excited about for so long." "Today is one of those days!" This tease understandably sent AI aficionados into a frenzy, expecting substantial ChatGPT news concerning o3, o4-mini, or something equally significant. But Altman was simply enthused about adding extra RAM to ChatGPT.

In February, Google released a capability for Gemini that allows it to recall and reference previous chats. And, with Google hosting the Google Cloud Next cloud computing conference this week, a continuous stream of Gemini AI news has emerged.

If the prospect of ChatGPT referring even more personal information from previous talks is unsettling, OpenAI has revealed two new chat options to control this capability. According to an OpenAI spokeswoman, users can already disable "Reference saved memories," which refers to "key facts about, say, your name or preferences."

Turning off "Reference chat history" inhibits ChatGPT's capacity to "draw context from past conversations to adapt to your tone, goals, interests, or other recurring topics," according to the representative. The chat history data associated with this setting is not explicitly "stored or shown in settings in the same way that saved memories are," the spokesman explained.

This implies that it will not use past discussions to personalise future chats, but your chats will remain in your chat history. To remain entirely anonymous, use the Temporary Chat function, which is essentially an incognito mode in which discussions are not saved in chat history and do not contribute to what ChatGPT remembers about you.

ChatGPT's increased memory is now available to ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Pro users, with Team, Enterprise, and Edu subscriptions to follow in the following weeks. The memory function is not available in the European Economic Area (EEA), the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, or Liechtenstein.