See what your AI remembers, and turn off what you don't want it to

Every AI tool you use is quietly keeping notes on you. Some of that is useful, most of it you never asked for. All four assistants below just gave you a real way to see what’s stored, decide what stays off-limits, or start a conversation that leaves no trace at all, and none of it costs anything extra.

Claude: review and edit what Claude remembers

Claude’s memory update from August lets you see, and change, exactly what it has saved about you, topic by topic.

1. Go to Settings, then Memory.
2. Everything Claude remembers is listed under Topics. Open any topic to read it.
3. Use the edit icon to fix or trim an entry, or Delete to remove it. The change applies to every future conversation.
4. Leave “Include sensitive topics in memory” off, the default, to keep health, religion, politics, and similar subjects out of memory entirely, or turn it on if you want Claude to remember those too.

When to reach for it: memory is on by default for Free, Pro, and Max (Team and Enterprise have it off by default, an owner can turn it on). Sensitive topics stay out unless you switch that on yourself, and Claude flags it in the chat each time it saves one, so nothing sensitive gets stored quietly.

Source: Claude Help Center

ChatGPT: pick what a Temporary Chat is allowed to use

Temporary Chat now lets you choose, before you type a word, whether it can touch your memory and custom instructions or skip them completely.

1. Start a new chat and click Temporary in the top right.
2. Choose Personalized to let the chat read your existing memories, custom instructions, and plugins without saving anything new, or Non-personalized to skip all three.
3. You can’t switch modes once the chat is running, so decide up front.
4. Changed your mind partway through? Click Save to turn it into a regular chat that follows your normal settings from then on.

When to reach for it: a Temporary Chat isn’t used to train OpenAI’s models and won’t create new memories while it stays temporary, but OpenAI may keep a copy for up to 30 days for safety review, so temporary means off your visible history, not gone immediately.

Source: OpenAI Help Center

Copilot: turn off training and ad personalization from your chats

Free consumer Copilot has separate switches for whether your chats train Microsoft’s models and whether they shape the ads you see, and most people never open the settings page where they live.

1. Open Copilot’s settings, then Privacy.
2. Turn off Training on Conversation Activity to keep your conversations out of AI model training. This doesn’t affect personalization or general product improvements.
3. In personalized ad settings, turn off “See ads that interest you” to stop your Copilot chat history from being used to target ads.
4. Use Delete All Memory to clear what Copilot remembers about you while keeping your conversation history, or delete individual or all conversations outright. Microsoft otherwise keeps conversation history up to 18 months by default.

When to reach for it: these are consumer copilot.microsoft.com settings, not Microsoft 365 Copilot. Turning off ad personalization stops your chats from shaping which ads you see, it doesn’t turn ads off entirely.

Source: Microsoft Support

Gemini: start a chat that leaves no trace

Temporary Chat gives Gemini a mode that skips your history, your personalization, and Google’s model training altogether.

1. Open a new conversation and tap the Temporary Chat icon.
2. Chat normally. It won’t show up in your recent chats or your Gemini Apps Activity.
3. Nothing from it is used to personalize your future responses or train Google’s AI models while it stays temporary.
4. Close it when you’re done. Google keeps it for up to 72 hours for safety and service reliability, then it’s gone.

When to reach for it: reach for this for anything you’d rather Gemini not remember, a sensitive question, a search you don’t want shaping your suggestions later. The 72 hour hold means temporary isn’t instant, it’s just kept out of your history and out of training.

Source: Gemini Apps Help

Try this

Pick whichever of these four tools you use most and actually open its memory or privacy settings this week, not just this email. Delete one thing you don’t remember agreeing to have stored, or start one conversation in temporary mode and see what’s different. It takes two minutes and tells you more than reading about it does.

Want this in your inbox each week? Subscribe to Darice on AI.