Researchers found information about users' desires, emotions, intentions, and beliefs in 52% of ChatGPT's memory records. 96% of these records were created by the chatbot itself, without asking users to remember anything.
Researchers found information about users' desires, emotions, intentions, and beliefs in 52% of ChatGPT's memory records. 96% of these records were created by the chatbot itself, without asking users to remember anything.
This is reported by Futurism, citing a study by scientists published in the proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2026.
To find out what ChatGPT knows about its interlocutors, the researchers studied the chat histories of 80 users. In the conversations of 65 of them, they found 2,050 memory entries — a kind of notes that the AI keeps to better understand the person in subsequent conversations.
The AI assistant's notes also include quite personal details. Examples cited by the researchers include a person feeling lonely despite having friends and family, fearing failure when making important career decisions, or relying on the chatbot's advice due to limited access to doctors.
In addition, 28% of the records contained personal data as defined by the European GDPR regulation. This could include names, addresses, information about a person's employment or social status. Another 7% of the records contained particularly sensitive information, such as information about health, religious or political beliefs.
ChatGPT most often retained users' desires - they appeared in 73% of entries with psychological information. In contrast, emotions appeared in only 14%. Scientists suggest that the chatbot prioritizes a person's long-term goals and intentions, rather than their fleeting experiences.
Sometimes ChatGPT even remembered things that users didn't actually say. For example, one person asked for recommendations for bands similar to Nirvana. The chatbot decided that she liked Nirvana and stored that in its memory. Even though the user didn't directly state anything like that.
Previously, dev.ua wrote that OpenAI introduced an updated ChatGPT memory system called Dreaming V3. It independently analyzes the communication history, remembers important details about the user, and can update information that has lost relevance.
