ChatGPT Memory Intro

Timothy Chester

Recently, I resumed work on a project from months ago and turned to ChatGPT for help analyzing documents. Expecting to start fresh, I was stunned when ChatGPT asked, “Do you want to pick up where we left off in November?”—even though I had deleted that conversation. When I asked it to summarize our past discussion, it produced a detailed response, despite my chat history being erased. This raised a bigger question: What does GenAI really remember, even after we delete our interactions? And if GenAI tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini retain context beyond a session, are they quietly building a “digital twin” of us? In today’s , we explore what AI knows, what we don’t know about its memory, and why the real concern shouldn’t be Artificial General Intelligence but what GenAI already remembers about us today.