What is AI memory?

AI memory is a feature of AI chat apps such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini that saves facts about a user between conversations. The app keeps short notes, such as the user’s role, preferred format or current projects, and adds the relevant ones to each new chat. The AI model itself does not remember anything. The app stores the notes and passes them back to it.

Why it matters for a business

Memory makes an assistant feel as if it knows the business, and it is easy to read more into it than is there. It holds a summary the product chose to keep, which can be quietly out of date, and it does not travel to another assistant. It is not access to the company’s systems: remembering that the team uses a particular helpdesk is a long way from being able to read a ticket in it. On a personal account, memory can also carry details from a pasted contract into an unrelated conversation later.

Example

Let’s say a support lead opens a new chat on Monday and it already knows she runs a 40-person support desk and wants numbers in a table. The product wrote those facts down during earlier chats and put them in front of the model before her first message.

Go deeper

How AI uses tools and memory

Related terms

• Context window
• AI assistant
• RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)
• Chatbot

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