RELEASE
Apr 5, 2026OpenAI GPT-5.4 makes persistent memory the default
ChatGPT now keeps a structured profile of you across conversations by default. Opt-out lives in settings—not behind a flag—and the API exposes a parallel memory primitive.
GPT-5.4 promotes ChatGPT’s long-running memory feature from opt-in to default. The model maintains a structured user profile that persists across sessions: stated preferences, recurring projects, and prior conversational context. Users keep granular control—the memory inspector now exposes individual entries with one-tap deletion—but the default is on.
The bigger shift is in the API. OpenAI introduced a new `memory` field on the Responses API that gives developers access to the same primitive: store retrievable user state at the model level rather than maintaining your own embedding store. Pricing is per-byte stored, with the first 100KB free per user.
For products built on the API, this lands somewhere between welcome and disruptive. It eliminates a class of vector-store infrastructure for personalization, but couples user data more tightly to OpenAI as a vendor. Expect rapid follow-from from Anthropic and Gemini—both have shipped beta memory APIs but neither makes them default.
Source
openai.com/blog