ChatGPT memory adds reviewable summaries as OpenAI cuts compute 5x

Memory becomes a product foundation

The change matters because useful assistants increasingly depend on context that survives a single chat. OpenAI wrote on June 4 that it has been researching ways for ChatGPT memory to carry context across conversations, and that the result is a “more capable memory system in ChatGPT.” The source post is on X.

The linked OpenAI article frames the release as an evolution from saved memories to a broader synthesis system. Saved memories, introduced in 2024, depended heavily on explicit cues from the user. In 2025, OpenAI added dreaming, a background process that references chat history to synthesize a memory state. The 2026 update builds a more capable and compute-efficient architecture on top of that approach, aimed at freshness, correctness, and scale across hundreds of millions of users.

The user-facing change is a reviewable memory summary. Instead of treating memory as a hidden list of notes, ChatGPT can show a summary of what it knows, let users add or update information, and accept instructions about which topics should come up and when. OpenAI says the update is available to Plus and Pro users in the US first, with additional countries plus Free and Go users following over the coming weeks.

The concrete number is compute. OpenAI says recent improvements reduced the compute required to serve dreaming to Free users by about 5x, making broader rollout practical while increasing memory capacity for paid users. The next issue to watch is governance at the interface level: as persistent memory expands, users need simple ways to inspect, correct, and constrain what the assistant carries forward.