Does ChatGPT keep your deleted chats?
“Deleted” on your screen and “deleted” on a server aren’t the same thing, and 2025 showed how quickly that can change.
Short answer
Normally for up to 30 days. A deleted chat leaves your history right away, and OpenAI removes it from its systems within 30 days, unless it has to keep it for security or legal reasons. In 2025, a court order made OpenAI keep even deleted chats for months.
You told ChatGPT something you regret. You delete the chat, and it’s gone from your sidebar. Is it gone for good?
The normal rule: 30 days
When you delete a chat in ChatGPT, it disappears from your history right away. OpenAI’s policy is to remove it from its systems within 30 days, unless it has to keep it for security or legal reasons. Temporary chats follow the same 30-day rule.
What changed in 2025
In its copyright case against OpenAI, The New York Times asked a court to stop OpenAI from deleting chats. From 13 May 2025, OpenAI had to keep ChatGPT conversations it would otherwise have deleted, including deleted and temporary chats. For new chats, that obligation ended on 26 September 2025 (Engadget). Chats already preserved were not simply thrown away.
Later in 2025, the court ordered OpenAI to hand over 20 million anonymised chat logs to the newspaper’s lawyers (Reuters). None of those users had done anything wrong. Their chats were simply there.
The lesson isn’t that OpenAI broke a promise. It’s that a company’s deletion policy can be overruled by a court, and you won’t be asked.
Asking something personal? Melo, Kamelo’s free private chat, answers on your own computer, so your question isn’t sent anywhere. How it works
Other AI apps
- Gemini: chats that were reviewed by people can be kept for up to 3 years, even if you delete them from your activity (ZDNet).
- Claude: since August 2025, chats can be kept for 5 years if you allow training. With training off, it’s 30 days (Anthropic).
- Shared links are a separate risk. In mid-2025, more than 4,500 shared ChatGPT chats could be found in Google, some with names in them (Search Engine Journal).
What you can do
- Delete chats you don’t need. It still helps: most of the time, the 30-day rule applies.
- Use a temporary chat for anything personal, so it doesn’t sit in your history.
- Turn training off in your settings.
- Most of all: leave details out that you never want stored. A chat that never contained your neighbour’s name can’t leak it.
Where Kamelo helps
Deleting works after the fact. Kamelo works before you send. When you type something personal on ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, it suggests a temporary chat, which stays out of your history, or Melo, which answers on your own computer in Chrome, so nothing is sent or kept. Kamelo doesn’t change your message and can’t hide who you are to your AI account.