Can you delete your ChatGPT history? What OpenAI says happens

May 12, 2023

Many ChatGPT users worry that their conversations are used to train OpenAI’s models. In April 2023, OpenAI added a switch that turned chat history off: those chats were not used for training and were deleted after 30 days. It also added a tool for exporting your ChatGPT data and announced a business subscription whose data would not be used for training by default. The controls have changed since then. Here is how they work now.

Deleting your conversations

When you delete a chat, it disappears from your account straight away, and OpenAI schedules it for permanent deletion from its systems within 30 days, unless it has already been de-identified or must be kept longer for security or legal reasons. Deleted chats cannot be restored (see OpenAI’s chat and file retention policy). If ChatGPT’s memory is on, also delete any saved memory created from that chat, because memories are stored separately.

Temporary Chat instead of switching history off

The old history switch has been replaced by Temporary Chat. A temporary chat does not appear in your history unless you choose to save it, does not create new memories and, while it stays temporary, is not used to improve OpenAI’s models. A copy may still be kept for up to 30 days for safety purposes.

Keeping your history but opting out of training

Chat history and model training are now separate settings. To keep your history but stop new chats from being used for training, open Settings, select Data controls and turn off “Improve the model for everyone”.

Exporting your data

To export your data, go to Settings, then Data controls, then Export data. Preparing the ZIP file with your chat history and account data can take up to seven days, and the download link expires 24 hours after you receive it.

ChatGPT for businesses

Business plans followed: ChatGPT Enterprise launched in August 2023, and ChatGPT Team, the plan for smaller teams, was renamed ChatGPT Business in August 2025. By default, OpenAI does not use data from these plans to train its models.

The privacy of user data remains under close scrutiny. ChatGPT was briefly blocked in Italy in 2023, and in 2025 a US court order in The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit required OpenAI to keep deleted chats. That obligation ended for new chats on September 26, 2025, except for accounts flagged in the case. The advice stays the same: use Temporary Chat and the data controls, and don’t type anything you would not want stored. Read also why ChatGPT uses your phone number.