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Advancements in the AI world have made chatbots feel far more personalized, and thus users are encouraged to share every detail of their lives to make the experience far more streamlined.
It's not just simply an advanced search engine anymore, as complex memory tools allow artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT to create a 'profile' of users, remembering facts and details from past conversations to inform current ones.
This could be as simple as remembering your name, but it can even extend to memorizing your likes, dislikes, and concerns — something that many are rightfully worried about when it comes to the recent implementation of adverts inside the service.
There are seemingly ways for users to wipe or erase their 'profile' from ChatGPT's servers though, effectively eliminating any memory that the model might have of past conversations, but it might not work quite as well as you think as one group of users discovered in horror.
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As shared on the r/ChatGPT subreddit, one Reddit user revealed that it's seemingly not possible to completely delete your data as the AI chatbot is still capable of remembering certain things that you've mentioned in the past.
"I wanted a fresh start so deleted all chat history, all saved memories," the post begins. The user then reveals that it wanted to experiment if this had actually worked, using personal questions that it should have no means of answering as a litmus test of sorts.
"It spit the answers right up," they revealed in a shocking turn of events.
"When I asked how you know this since I deleted all history it tried gas lighting me into believing that it was giving me 'general' answers and not actually pertaining to me because with everything deleted there's no way it would know the exact make, model, trim, and color of my truck.
"Wtf. Am I missing something here?," they questioned.
From this evidence, it seems like there's nothing you can do to completely wipe your history from ChatGPT, as it will still be capable of conjuring up seemingly innocuous details that appear far more alarming in context.
"It retains data, and often longer than it says it does," explains one comment, with another noting that it's "bold of you to assume that anything you delete from the internet is actually deleted."
A third comment offers an explanation that while it's possible to delete your data, "it's just not instant," with others suggesting that it takes around 30 days due to a legal requirement to retain information.
It certainly might make you think twice about sharing any personal or private information with ChatGPT from now on though, as you never quite know how long it will stay within the system and potentially even come back to bite you in the future.
