GhatGPT Can Now Remember Conversations for Free Users Too
ChatGPT introduced its memory feature over a year ago . The feature allows users to save specific details of their life or work to ChatGPT’s memory bank, so they don’t have to repeat them with each new request. But using the memory feature once it was launched often required manually checking the saved information and managing it yourself, meaning it was fairly easy to let it fall behind.
OpenAI’s solution was to let ChatGPT remember much more about you . The memory feature now creates a long-term memory bank based on all of ChatGPT’s saved conversations, not just key details. You can still save those key details, but you no longer have to rely on just them. Until now, conversation memory was limited to paid users , meaning those with the ChatGPT Plus plan and above.
Now, however, OpenAI is releasing a limited version of this feature to all free and registered users. If you use ChatGPT several times a day, this may help cut down on some of the back-and-forth in your conversations with it.
ChatGPT will now remember your last conversations
Now, in addition to the ability to remember key details about you that free users already have, ChatGPT can reference your chat history even if you don’t pay for it. However, the chat history for free users will be limited to recent conversations, while paid users can choose to let the AI remember their entire conversation history.
When enabled, ChatGPT will use your past conversations to automatically pull up useful information about you that you’ve shared with it before. It will use this to learn about your interests, hobbies, or topics you frequently ask about to make chats more personalized and relevant.
It’s not entirely clear how far back in time the feature can retrieve memory for free users. OpenAI says the free version of the feature is “ lightweight ” and focuses on “short-term continuity,” so don’t expect it to retrieve conversations that are several years old, or perhaps even months old.
There is, however, a non-scientific way to check what ChatGPT knows about you. In addition to checking your stored memories (I’ll get to that in a second), you can ask the bot to describe you based on your chat history with it. ChatGPT will list what it knows about you based on previous conversations it has in its memory.
How to Stop ChatGPT from Remembering Your Recent Conversations
I can see this feature being useful for people who use ChatGPT regularly. If you use ChatGPT to plan workouts and meals based on certain information you’ve already given it about yourself, for example, I can see how having access to information you shared in a chat a week ago could be useful. Just be careful not to trust its advice too much .
On the other hand, there will be times when you either don’t want ChatGPT to remember anything, or you’d rather it not check your conversation history when looking for an answer.
To temporarily avoid the memory feature update, you can try using ChatGPT’s temporary chat feature, which is similar to ChatGPT’s incognito mode. What you say here will not be saved by ChatGPT’s history or this new memory feature. When you start a new chat, use the chat icon with dots in the upper right corner to turn it into a temporary chat.
A more permanent option is to disable the feature entirely. This is good if you don’t want ChatGPT to remember your conversations. To do this, click on the profile icon in ChatGPT and select Settings . Go to Personalization and find the Memory section.
Now, turn off the Link to chat history option. This will prevent the AI from remembering what you’ve said to it before. You can also turn off Link to saved memories here, which will turn off your chat history and prevent ChatGPT from remembering key details about you. Or, click Manage Memories to see a specific list of key details ChatGPT knows about you, and delete them if you want.