According to a blog post released last week, OpenAI seems quite proud of the "improvements" it's made to managing user memories in the chatbot. I'm not sure I like them. In fact, I know I don't. I'm just not sure whether turning the improvements off will make things better or worse.

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Memories, for the purpose of this discussion, are details you share with ChatGPT. Introduced in 2024, memories were basically a list of facts the AI could reference. Today, they have expanded considerably to include your entire chat history, explicit instructions, personal constraints, and even implicit preferences the AI derives from past behavior and casual remarks.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

This article has three sections. First, I'll go over the technical information from OpenAI's recent blog post about ChatGPT's improved memory capabilities. Second, I'll show you the interface elements you can use to tweak ChatGPT's memories. Finally, I'll wrap up with why this feature freaks me out and why it might worry you, too.

Before 2024, ChatGPT didn't have memories of any kind. Each chat session lived on its own, and whatever you told it was unavailable to any other session.