Learn how temporary chat handles personalization, chat history, model improvement, and retention, and what changes when you save a chat. A temporary chat stays out of your chat history and is not used to improve OpenAI models while it remains temporary. It can use existing memories, custom instructions, and plugins to personalize responses. Before the conversation begins, you can turn personalization off. You can also save the chat later as a regular chat. Open a new chat. Open a new chat. Select Temporary . Select Temporary . Choose Personalized or Unpersonalized before you send your first message. Choose Personalized or Unpersonalized before you send your first message. Enter your message. Enter your message. Before the conversation begins, choose how you want the temporary chat to respond: Unpersonalized: Does not use memory, custom instructions, or plugins. Unpersonalized: Does not use memory, custom instructions, or plugins. Personalized: Can use your existing memories, custom instructions, and plugins. Personalized: Can use your existing memories, custom instructions, and plugins. Neither option creates or updates memories while the chat remains temporary. You cannot change personalization after the conversation starts.

Your account and workspace restrictions take priority over the personalization choice for an individual temporary chat. ChatGPT may still use information from prior conversations for limited safety and security purposes. Turning off memory and personalization features does not disable safety features that may use limited, safety-relevant context in rare, high-risk situations to help ChatGPT respond more safely. For more information about safety context, see: Helping ChatGPT better recognize context in sensitive conversations . You can save a temporary chat to your chat history if you want to return to it later. Saving converts it into a regular chat, including when it started without personalization. From that point forward, the saved chat follows your account’s personalization and model-improvement settings. If Memory is on, the saved conversation may be used to personalize future responses. Account and workspace restrictions still apply. If you do not save a temporary chat, it will not appear in your history and cannot be reopened from history after you leave it. If your temporary chat includes uploaded files, eligible files may also be saved to Library or Space when you save the chat, subject to availability and storage limits. For more information about saved files, see: Using Library to manage files in ChatGPT . For help finding saved files in Space, see: Getting started with Space in ChatGPT . A temporary chat is not used to improve OpenAI models while it remains temporary, whether or not you choose personalization. If you save it, your model-improvement setting applies. OpenAI may keep a copy of a temporary chat for up to 30 days for safety purposes. Once saved as a regular chat, the conversation follows the retention rules for saved chats. For more information about temporary chat retention, see: Chat and file retention in ChatGPT . Temporary chat stays out of your history unless you save it. Regular chats stay in your chat history and follow your account’s personalization and data settings. You can use temporary chat with GPTs. If a GPT uses actions, data sent to a third party through an action is governed by the recipient's privacy policy. The recipient may retain that data for longer than 30 days and may use it for other purposes. For eligible Enterprise customers, temporary chats are available through the Compliance API for 30 days, including when the workspace has a different custom retention period. For more information about Compliance API access, see: OpenAI Compliance Platform for Enterprise and Edu customers . Was this article helpful?