I think they’re just using ChatGPT to help Developers using their API.
Users provide free data which improves GPT.
Developers pay for requests to the GPT API to build apps.
There are lots of paid apps on the App Store that developers made where your chats would not disappear.
I know it’s ‘FREE’. Lots of things are 'FREE" but you don’t expect your bits of content, whether it’s calendar entries in your ‘free’ calendar app or notes in your ‘free’ notes app on your phone to just disappear or every bit of your social media history to just disappear because you didn’t back it all up on to your device.
If you are storing important information on FREE apps I would reassess your decisions.
Maybe the FREE app should either allow exporting of data, or offer a fucking paid tier so we can keep using it without interruption.
Exactly. I couldn’t agree more.
Or it could be pointed out to you that it is a test and a service that is still in its infancy, i.e. at an early stage of development BEFORE you start using it…oh wait a minute, they did that.
I’m a computer software engineer at Apple with 16 years of experience.
…I figured out a highly technical hack to export it:
I copy and paste the output to Microsoft word.
This has allowed me to bypass the losing of prior chats from this free service.
Yes indeed, but if you’ve ever had your computer crash, you’ve learned the hard way that in technology, you always have to have a backup. I’m assuming you’re now producing hard copies for yourself.
What about good old copy and paste ? I did not expect them to save anything for me, and maybe it is also good that they do not store this stuff that comes in people’s mind 
If you really have a good output than just save it locally. I personally love GPT3 and DALL-E, and i already have a payed account just to support them!
Chat GPT is going to and already has changed the world within weeks.
So many things will change, Homework, Blogging, Texting, Writing, old ways will be broken and new techniques be developed. love it…
I know it’s frustrating, but things designed by humans are bound to break at some point. sh** happens… 
But this is not currently being offered as a service… It’s a “research preview”. I keep seeing people dismayed by this that and the other when things don’t work in a certain way… Seriously we are just here to help them test stuff
That’s it’s, that’s the full extent… We have no rights or expectations because it’s not an actual product offering right now, free or not, it doesn’t matter!
I am sorry for your loss @martinkoss
As a developer with decades of tech experience, the terms of service for ChatGPT at this point in time that is that is basically a kind of “beta, experimental” release.
I have written two apps using the OpenAI API, and I don’t expect anything to be production quality at this point in time, so I cannot disagree more with your title statement:
This is a free, beta, pre-release service. Your requirement for all chats to be saved should be a feature request to ChatGPT, not a rant against them, in my view.
I think OpenAI is revolutionary and look forward to advances and new features over time. Be happy.
Hope this helps.
Can always have it create a bookmarklet that will download the current webpage tab as an html file 
There are a lot of open source ChatGPT exporter scripts on Tampermonkey: ChatGPT Exporter
How much time did you put into your sessions vs how much time did you put into backing them up?
Remember: it was a free opportunity for the general public - you - to experience what an advanced chat-agent could deliver notwithstanding bad prompts and faulty reasoning/logic from the user base.
for what its worth
I pay for it. It’s not free to me. As a paid service I would expect my history to stay.
Per the chat interface:
History is temporarily unavailable. We’re working to restore this feature as soon as possible.
The team is working hard on this! Closing for now, but please keep an eye on the history there as the team works to restore it.