ChatGPT is getting a memory, thus remembering your previous chats in order to make future ones more helpful. This is currently in testing with « a small portion » of free and Plus users, rolling out this week. A broader rollout isn’t planned yet, but OpenAI promises it will share more soon.
Memory is just that – you can ask ChatGPT to remember something specific or let it pick up details itself. Memory will get better the more you use it and improvements will be more and more noticeable over time.
This is useful if you want ChatGPT to remember details about you and people important to you to make your interactions easier and less convoluted in the future. Or it can remember your preferences – say, about formatting when you have it write something for you. It can also remember your tone and voice and automatically apply them to things like blog posts without needing repetition.
When coding, you tell it your programming language and frameworks and it will remember them for subsequent tasks, streamlining the process. If you create lesson plans as a teacher, as another example, it can remember that you prefer 50-minute lessons and adapt to that.
An AI generated image of someone using AI »on » their phone
While ChatGPT’s new function allows it to remember stuff, it can also forget whatever you want it to, you just need to tell it. You can view and delete specific memories or clear all memories in settings (do note that deleting a chat won’t erase its memories, you have to delete the memory itself).
You also have the opportunity to use temporary conversations without memory. These chats won’t appear in history, won’t use memory, and won’t be used to train OpenAI’s models. Or you can simply turn off memory at any time through settings. While it’s off, you won’t be able to create or use memories.
