I've noticed that ChatGPT has a feature to remember details across chats, but I assumed that deleting a chat would erase everything associated with it. Recently, however, ChatGPT referred to something from a chat that I had deleted! How can it remember specific information from a completely deleted conversation? It didn't save anything from that chat into memory, so I'm confused about how this works.
3 Answers
ChatGPT operates with different types of memory. There’s persistent memory for ongoing conversations, session memory for the current chat, and a sort of hidden behavioral memory. It didn't exactly remember your deleted chat; it probably inferred the context based on previous interactions. But still, that's a specific detail you're talking about, which seems odd!
I've actually read that it might take some time for your chats to be fully deleted, like up to 30 days! So even if it seems gone from your view, there might still be ways ChatGPT can access it during that time.
It sounds like there might be some sort of semantic analysis going on. Maybe when you deleted the chat, the memory of it didn't get wiped out immediately. They could be storing some kind of embeddings of your past conversations, separate from the actual text. So even if you delete a chat, the details could still linger in the system for a while.
That makes sense! It really feels like the context stays in a way that isn't obvious to the user.
Wow, I had no idea it took that long! That's kind of unnerving if true.