GhatGPT Can Now Remember Conversations for Free Users Too

ChatGPT introduced its Memory feature more than a year ago now. This feature lets users save particular details about their life or work in the ChatGPT memory bank, so they don’t need to repeat them with each new prompt. But using the Memory feature as it launched frequently required manually checking which information was saved and managing it yourself, which meant it was pretty easy to let it fall behind.

OpenAI’s solution was to let ChatGPT remember way more about you. The Memory feature now builds a long-term memory bank based on all your saved ChatGPT conversations, rather than just key details. You can still save those key details, but you don't have to rely only on them anymore. Until now, conversation memory was limited to paid users, meaning those with a ChatGPT Plus plan and higher.

Now, though, OpenAI is rolling out a limited version of this feature for all free and logged-in users. If you use ChatGPT multiple times a day, this might help reduce some back and forth in your conversations with it.

ChatGPT will now remember your recent conversations

Now, in addition to being able to remember key details about you, which was already available to free users, ChatGPT can reference your chat history, even if you don't pay for it. However, chat history for free users will be limited to recent conversations, whereas paid users can have the AI remember all of their conversation history.

When this feature is enabled, ChatGPT will use your past conversations to automatically recall 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, in order to make chats more personalized and relevant.

How far back the feature's memory can pull from for free users isn't exactly clear. OpenAI says the free version of this feature is "lightweight" and focuses on "short term continuity," so don't expect it to pull back from conversations that are a few years, or possibly even months, old.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

There is an unscientific way to test what ChatGPT knows about you, though. In addition to checking your saved memories (I'll get to that in a second), you could ask the bot to describe you based on your chat history with it. ChatGPT will list what it knows about you based on the previous conversations available in its memory.

How to stop ChatGPT from remembering your recent conversations

I can see this feature being useful to people who use ChatGPT all the time. If you use ChatGPT to plan out workouts and meals based on specific information you've already given it about you, for instance, I can see how accessing information shared in a chat from a week ago can be helpful. Just be careful not to trust its advice too much.

On the flipside, there will be times when you either won’t want ChatGPT to remember something, or you'd rather it not check your conversation history when finding an answer.

To temporarily avoid the memory feature upgrade, you can try using ChatGPT’s Temporary Chat feature, which is like ChatGPT’s Incognito mode. The things you say here won’t be saved by ChatGPT history or by this new Memory feature. When you start a new chat, use the dotted Chat icon in the top-right corner to turn it into a Temporary chat.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

A more permanent option is to turn off the feature altogether. This is good if you'd rather ChatGPT not remember any of your conversations. To do this, click your Profile icon in ChatGPT and choose Settings. Go to Personalization, and find the Memory section.

Now, disable the Reference chat history option. This will prevent the AI from remembering what you've said to it before. You can also disable Reference saved memories here, which both turns off chat history and keeps ChatGPT from remembering key details about you. Alternatively, click Manage memories to see a specific list of key details that ChatGPT knows about you, and delete them if you wish.

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