What is Memory in ChatGPT? Get personalized answers for who you are what you need

AI never fails to surprise us, and ChatGPT, the generative AI platform by OpenAI that took the world by storm is here with something new again. This time, this is not something completely new, but a new feature in ChatGPT that might not again create waves, but will definitely create ripples among users who actively use ChatGPT. 

The feature I am talking about will give ChatGPT the power to remember important facts and use them later to generate answers when relevant topics arise. So what is the Memory for ChatGPT? What are the key features, and how Memory in ChatGPT will benefit users without making them too wary about privacy? Let's find out. 

Memory for ChatGPT

With Memory for ChatGPT, the bot will learn important points about you, the more you use it, and it will use the information as references during future conversations. So, if you are allergic to prawns, and you mention it in some context, ChatGPT will never ever recommend a recipe that requires prawns. Similarly, ChatGPT will not forget that you have a hatchback, and ride it during the weekends, or while going to the office.

The more you use ChatGPT, it will also understand your personal preferences and flavors, your favorite music genre, and all these will make ChatGPT a better chatbot to serve you. ChatGPT will build a personal profile for individual users to make the chats feel more personalized, and you will never have to remember those small details while seeking answers, just like a real secretary will do for you.

While the introduction of the ChatGPT Memory might seem to be a trivial iteration, you can realize the power it has once you start using it, and you realize ChatGPT is optimizing the answers without you mentioning the details every time.

ChatGPT won’t remember sensitive information

If you are vigilant about companies and websites collecting personal information to sell ads, ChatGPT won’t remember sensitive information or information that is specific to an individual. To elaborate, ChatGPT won’t remember your health data unless you explicitly ask it to do so. Nor will it remember your IDs like UID, PAN number, etc.

As per OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, the system has been made smart enough to identify and purge data that are sensitive and are not supposed to be kept in the user’s profile. It is not that you have to manually add memories, like ‘Hey I mostly ride a hatchback to my office’, or ‘My kid reads in Class 5.’. It will automatically identify the information worthy of remembering for offering you personalized chat results.

Just like you ask your partner to forget that embarrassing memory, which is sort of impossible as a human being, ChatGPT can. Simply ask ChatGPT to forget something, and ChatGPT won’t optimize the answers based on the forgotten information. Besides this, you will soon get a ‘Manage Memory’ section within ChatGPT settings where you will be able to see what ChatGPT knows about you and have more control over what ChatGPT remembers.

You don’t need to enable Memory within ChatGPT

Memory in ChatGPT is a new feature, and hence, most users will not know about it, unless they realize the optimizations in the answers. That said, ChatGPT Memory will be enabled by default.

However, you can disable this feature totally if you don’t want a ChatGPT to know more about you.

Thanks, Temporary Chat bringing the best of both worlds

Understandably, you often don’t want your memories to impact the answers. Say, for example, you are helping out your not-so-tech savvy colleague, who has a totally different taste altogether, or you are helping your kid with his school projects. 

To help you in such situations OpenAI introduced Temporary Chat, which is just like the InPrivate mode aka. the Incognito mode in web browsers. During temporary chats, the answers will totally be independent of the memories, and can hence be a great solution for different situations.

FYI, ChatGPT will keep the temporary chats for 30 days for safety reasons.

ChatGPT will be smarter

As of now, Memory in ChatGPT is available for a limited number of users, both paid and free, but it will be an integral part of ChatGPT, and likely most other chatbots quite soon. Except for those using ChatGPT Enterprise and Teams, the memories will be used to train the models to make ChatGPT even smarter.

Getting over ChatGPT limitations

ChatGPT will always answer your questions based on what you asked for. However, if you are too specific, you have to mention what exactly you need, for the appropriate answers. However, with Memory within ChatGPT, this will be a thing of the past. Yes, you have to be specific, there’s no doubt about it. However, ChatGPT will understand your requirements better, if you work for an organization, ChatGPT will optimize the answers so that it meets your organization's needs, and so on.

More power but there is control in your hands

Well, there is now one more company that will create a personal profile to serve you better. No, it’s not a hoax, as it will indeed make the experience better. However, it’s not that ChatGPT is remembering your chats for the first time. ChatGPT has used your chats to train the models and will continue doing so. Previously, it was used just to train the models, but now it will serve a dual purpose. So, yes, Memory will make ChatGPT powerful, however, you still have control in your hands. Simply disable the feature, and use ChatGPT, just like you used to do it.

So, that’s all we know so far about Memory for ChatGPT. Do you have any questions? Feel free to comment on the same below.