Hello,
I have a question about ChatGPT’s memory feature and was wondering if anyone else has experienced similar behavior.
Previously, I was often able to ask ChatGPT things like “show me this memory” or “use the saved values from my memory,” and it could retrieve them. Recently, however, some memories seem to no longer be accessible.
From what I’ve observed:
- Memories that were saved on 2026-02-21 can still sometimes be retrieved.
- Memories that were saved on 2025-07-28 are currently not being retrieved.
- I didn’t record the save dates for older memories, so I can’t fully verify them, but they also seem to be unavailable more often.
This made me wonder:
- Does the memory retrieval process depend on the date a memory was created or last updated?
- Does retrieving a memory once make it more likely to be retrieved again in the future, or is retrieval based on how frequently a memory is used?
- Is this the current intended behavior, or could it be a temporary issue?
I understand that the internal implementation may not be publicly documented, but if anyone has experienced something similar or knows how memory retrieval is intended to work, I would really appreciate your insights.
Thank you!
Hi and welcome back @chiemi_baba!
This Memory FAQ may help clarify some of this.
https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8590148-memory-faq
From how I understand it, ChatGPT memory is not meant to work like a complete searchable archive where every past detail is always retrievable on request. The FAQ says the memory summary does not necessarily include all memories; it is a high-level synthesis and some details may not appear if they are less relevant or not appropriate to show in that view.
It also says ChatGPT does not remember every detail from past chats, so if something is important and should always be kept in mind, saved memories are the safer place for that.
The new memory system updates memories automatically with ChatGPT keeping track of the details it determines are most important so it can continue building on the context you’ve already shared. If you prefer to revert to the legacy saved memories system, go to Settings > Memory > and click the “saved memories” link below “Memory summary”.
Help OpenAI article: Memory FAQ
The article also mentions that ChatGPT considers factors such as recency and how often you talk about a topic when deciding which memories stay “top of mind,” so date/frequency may matter, but probably not in a simple “older = unavailable” way.
So this may be intended behavior rather than a bug, but if a specific saved memory used to be retrievable and now is not, Support may need to clarify.
Thank you for your reply! It really helped me better understand how the memory system is intended to work.
I do have one more question, though.
When you mention relevance and recency, what determines that relevance?
For example, could it be influenced by a memory’s creation date, last update date, or how often it has been referenced?
Also, some saved memories that used to be retrievable are no longer accessible for me. As you mentioned, perhaps this is something Support would need to clarify.
I don’t think based on reading the article, if the exact relevance calculation is publicly documented, so I can’t say whether creation date, update date or reference frequency has a specific weight.
Though, the article shows that users can give feedback when a memory/past chat source is used, for example marking it as relevant or not relevant, making a correction or asking ChatGPT not to mention it again.
Here’s an example screenshot from the article to show user’ feedback on if the memory that was used my the model was relevant or not:
So users can influence memory behavior through feedback and memory management, but I don’t think we can know the exact internal ranking logic from the public FAQ.
Yeah, I think it would be better that Support clarifies this for you.
Hopeful I’ve managed to answer a bit to your question/questions. And I really recommend to read the Memory FAQ article, it answers a lot and it was updated 12 days ago.
Thank you so much, Larisa! 
I really appreciate all the time you took to explain this and share the screenshots.
I’ll start by reading the Memory FAQ more carefully, including the previous versions if I can find them. 
You’re welcome!
And I am not sure, but I think the Help Center article is usually updated in place, so there may not be separate “previous articles” available publicly. If you mean older versions of the same FAQ, those might only be available if someone saved screenshots or through an external archive. The current article is probably the best source to use now.
