Privacy · what's stored about you
What ChatGPT remembers
30-second gist~30s read
Three different things get stored, and they're not the same:
1. Your conversation history — every chat, viewable in your account. 2. Memory — facts the AI has been told to remember about you ("Sush prefers short answers"). 3. Training data — whether your conversations are used to improve future models. All three can be turned off.
If you want more
The three switches, by service
- ChatGPT (OpenAI): Settings → Personalization → Memory (toggle off). Settings → Data Controls → "Improve the model for everyone" (toggle off). Free and Plus accounts have these by default; Enterprise and Team accounts don't train on your data at all.
- Claude (Anthropic): Anthropic does not train on your conversations by default. No setting required.
- Gemini (Google): Google Account → Activity Controls → Gemini Apps Activity. Turn off to stop saving — but be aware: turning it off means losing your chat history too.
- Microsoft Copilot (consumer): Settings → Privacy → "Use my conversations". Enterprise/365 Copilot has a stricter "no training on your data" promise.
What "deleted" actually means
"Delete this chat" usually removes it from your view immediately. Behind the scenes, providers typically retain the data for 30 days for abuse-prevention and legal purposes, after which it's purged. If your chat had already been used to train a model, deletion does not remove what the model learnt — but you can still stop new conversations from being used.