Find Out What ChatGPT Knows About You — And How To Make It Forget

If you’ve been a long-term user of ChatGPT, the AI chatbot may know a lot about you — including information you’d really rather it didn’t. Here’s how to find out what ChatGPT knows about you and how to erase information from its memory.

How ChatGPT Stores Your Personal Information

ChatGPT harvests snippets of information from your conversations and stores these in memory for reference. For example, it might store details about your profession, where you live and your hobbies and interests so it can provide more tailored answers in the future. (By the way, it knows a lot more than that about most people, and we’ll come to exposing what it knows shortly).

You’ll often get a visual indication when ChatGPT is storing a fact about you, because you’ll see an “Updated saved memory” label in your conversations. You can click on that label to find out which particular piece of information the AI has stashed away for future reference.

How To Find Out What ChatGPT Knows About You

You don’t have to rely on spotting those little labels during conversations. You can simply ask ChatGPT to come clean on what it knows about you.

Enter the following prompt:

What do you know about me?

This only works for users who’ve logged into a ChatGPT account. Memories are now stored about both free and paid-for account holders, whereas previously you had to have a subscription before the AI would remember details about you.

When I entered the above prompt into my account, it reeled off a long list of facts it had remembered about me, including books/articles I was writing, where I live, places I’m considering moving to and the type of music I listen to.

It had also stored some deeply personal data about me, such as ongoing health issues, details of my children and information about my personal finances. To be clear, this is information I had volunteered to the AI in the first place — it’s not performing its own background research (to the best of my knowledge!) — but it’s stuff you might not want the AI to capture permanently.

How To Correct Memories Stored By ChatGPT

When I entered the prompt above, at the end of the very long list of facts ChatGPT had stored on me, it asked: “Would you like me to forget or update any of this?”

I’d used ChatGPT when researching a new car, so its list of stored facts included a series of cars that I’d shortlisted. I told ChatGPT that “I have bought the car and it’s a Honda Jazz Hybrid” and it updated its memory accordingly — as denoted by the “updated saved memory” label. “If you ever want help with maintenance tips, fuel efficiency tracking, or setting up Android Auto in your Honda Jazz Hybrid, just shout,” it replied.

How To Make ChatGPT Forget Memories

If you click on one of those “Updated saved memory” labels, you’ll find an option to Manage memories. You can also find this menu by clicking on your profile icon, then Settings > Personalization and then clicking the Manage memories link (which is in tiny text beneath the Reference saved memories option).

Now you should get a comprehensive list of all the facts that ChatGPT has stored about you. You can click the little bin icon at the end of each fact to delete it, or select Delete All at the bottom of the window to clear its memory.

To stop ChatGPT from storing any personal information, go back to the previous screen and switch off Reference saved memories.

How To Chat Confidentially With ChatGPT

If you want to talk to ChatGPT about a personal issue or something else you’d rather it wasn’t stashing away for future reference, you can hold a temporary chat. These are activated by clicking the dotted speech bubble next to your profile picture in the top right of the screen.

When you’re in temporary chat mode, the AI won’t store anything from the conversation in its memory, nor will it appear in your chat history. You won’t be able to return to the chat once you’ve left the chat window, so if there’s any vital information you wish to refer to later, make sure to copy and paste it out of the chat or take screenshots.

How To Secure Your ChatGPT Account

You might be comfortable with ChatGPT storing your personal details, but you clearly don’t want anyone else getting access to your account and harvesting that information. Therefore, it makes sense to turn on two-factor authentication to all but eliminate the risk of third parties breaking into your account.

To do this, click on your profile icon then Settings. Choose Security from the Settings menu and then click to enable multi-factor authentication.

You’ll be shown a QR code for use with an authenticator app such as Authy. Once registered, you’ll need to enter a six-digit code from your authenticator app every time you log in to ChatGPT from a new device, ensuring someone who’s stolen your password can’t access your account.

You can find out what ChatGPT knows about you, but nobody else should if you secure your account properly.