From now on, whenever you finish a conversation with ChatGPT, it will automatically save the details of your conversation to its memory, even if you don’t explicitly ask it to. As OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced in an X post, as spotted by The Verge, “We have greatly improved memory in chatgpt — it can now reference all your past conversations!” He also expressed his enthusiasm for this new feature, stating that “This is a surprisingly great feature imo, and it points at something we are excited about: ai systems that get to know you over your life, and become extremely useful and personalized.”

OpenAI has been continuously working to enhance ChatGPT’s memory capabilities since 2023. Initially, the company started testing custom instructions, which allowed users to set preferences for ChatGPT to consider in future conversations. For instance, users could inform the chatbot about their family size, and it would remember this detail when providing dinner recipes. Later, at the start of last year, OpenAI introduced a feature that enabled users to instruct ChatGPT to remember specific details from previous chats. With this latest update, ChatGPT can now recall both the information you provide and the insights it gathers from your conversations.

According to OpenAI, “The more you use ChatGPT, the more useful it becomes. New conversations build upon what it already knows about you to make smoother, more tailored interactions over time,” as stated on the company’s website. The update is currently being rolled out to users of the $200 per month Pro plan and the $20 per month Plus tier. Team, Enterprise, and Edu users can expect to gain access to the feature “in a few weeks.” However, OpenAI has not announced when the update will be available to free users.

If you prefer not to have ChatGPT save your conversations, you can disable this feature through the settings menu. As OpenAI notes, “If you’ve already opted out of memory, ChatGPT won’t reference past conversations by default.” Additionally, you can utilize the Temporary Chat feature on a case-by-case basis for conversations that you don’t want ChatGPT to save to its memory.