Please add a simple show/hide or collapse option for each assistant answer in a conversation.
The main reason is cost reduction.
In long ChatGPT conversations, assistant answers can be very long. After a conversation has many questions and answers, it becomes difficult for users to quickly scan the thread and find an earlier question they already asked. When users cannot easily find the previous answer, they often ask the same question again.
That means ChatGPT has to generate a new answer for something it may have already answered in the same conversation. This creates unnecessary inference cost, increases token usage, and wastes compute resources.
A simple collapse feature could reduce this:
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Keep user questions visible by default.
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Allow each assistant answer to be collapsed or expanded.
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When collapsed, show only a short preview or first line of the answer.
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Let users quickly scan their previous questions and reopen the answer only when needed.
This would make long conversations easier to navigate, but more importantly, it could reduce repeated prompts and repeated answer generation. If users can find prior answers faster, they are less likely to ask the same question again.
This seems like a relatively small UI improvement that could reduce unnecessary usage costs while also improving the user experience.