Anthropic's Claude Chatbot Gains Memory Feature: A Step Towards Personalized AI Assistance

Anthropic's Claude chatbot can now remember your past conversations

On Monday, Anthropic released a hotly anticipated memory function for its Claude chatbot. In a YouTube video, the company demonstrated a user asking what they had been chatting about with Claude before their vacation. Claude searches past chats to read and summarize them for the user, then asks if they'd like to move on and keep working on the same project. "Never lose track of your work again," the company wrote. "Claude now remembers your past conversations, so you can seamlessly continue projects, reference previous discussions, and build on your ideas without starting from scratch every time." The feature works across web, desktop, and mobile, and it can keep different projects and workspaces separate. It started rolling out to Claude's Max, Team, and Enterprise subscription tiers today -- just go to "Settings" under "Profile" and switch the feature on under "Search and reference chats" -- and the company said other plans should receive access soon. But there's an important caveat here: It's not yet a persistent memory feature like OpenAI's ChatGPT. Claude will only retrieve and reference your past chats when you ask it to, and it's not building a user profile, according to Anthropic spokesperson Ryan Donegan. Anthropic and OpenAI have been going head-to-head in the AI arms race for quite a while, racing to roll out competing features and functionalities -- like voice modes, larger context windows, and new subscription tiers -- as they both raise ever-increasing funding amounts. Last week, OpenAI launched GPT-5, and Anthropic is currently looking to close a round that could value it as high as $170 billion. Memory functions are another way leading AI companies are looking to attract and keep users on one chatbot service, increasing "stickiness" and user engagement. Chatbots' memory functions have been the subject of online debate in recent weeks, as ChatGPT has been both lauded and lambasted for its references to users' past conversations, with some users controversially treating it as a therapist and others experiencing mental health struggles that some are referring to as "ChatGPT psychosis."

Claude can now save you more time by automatically referencing past chats

Claude just got a major memory upgrade: Anthropic's flagship generative AI chatbot can now retrieve information from past conversations, the company announced Monday. The new feature is designed to enable a more streamlined, convenient, and personalized user experience. Also: Claude Sonnet's memory gets a big boost with 1M tokens of context If you're collaborating with the chatbot on a project and need to take a break midway through, for example, you can come back and simply prompt it to pick up where you left off. In a YouTube video posted by Anthropic, a user tells the chatbot that they've just returned from vacation and asks for a reminder of what they'd been working on before they left. The chatbot is shown organizing the content of its conversations with the user from that time period by subject, narrowing the list down until it's able to clearly convey the specific task the user had been engaged in before their vacation, and suggesting a couple of next steps. Users can now prompt Claude to pull information from all of their previous conversations, or from a specific project. Frontier AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are racing to build more reliable and sophisticated chatbots -- the ability to remember information over time has become an important component in that competition. Also: Why AI chatbots make bad teachers - and how teachers can exploit that weakness It's a delicate dance. Allow a chatbot to remember too much information about a particular user, and you start to veer into privacy issues or risk mental health downsides; a user could, for example, run a higher risk of becoming emotionally dependent upon a chatbot that seems to know and understand them, as opposed to one that just delivers generic and impersonal responses. But constrain their memory too much, and they start to fall behind competing chatbots, which are constantly becoming smarter, more agentic, and more fine-tuned to the needs of individual users. ChatGPT, for example, can form "memories" of important biographical details about users, like their name or profession, that will help inform its future responses (though this feature can also be turned off). Users can also directly ask the chatbot to remember important personal details. All saved memories can then be viewed and, if necessary, deleted, giving users a measure of control over how granular and comprehensive a user profile the chatbot builds for them. The basic idea is that, by recalling information from previous chats, ChatGPT will gradually be able to deliver a more personalized experience to each user. "The more you use ChatGPT, the more useful it becomes," OpenAI writes in the FAQ section of its website. "You'll start to notice improvements over time as it builds a better understanding of what works best for you." Also: How to use ChatGPT freely without giving up your privacy - with one simple trick Anthropic is taking a slightly different course with its new upgrade for Claude, allowing the chatbot to only retrieve information from past conversations when it's been explicitly prompted to do so. Accessible via desktop, mobile, and the Claude app, the new memory feature is being rolled out today to paid subscribers of the company's Max, Team, and Enterprise plans. It's expected to be made available to more users soon. Also: I tested this new AI podcast tool to see if it can beat NotebookLM - here's how it did Once it's been made available to your subscription tier, the memory feature will be turned on by default, according to Anthropic's website. Users also have the option to disable it by going to Settings > Profile > Preferences and toggling "Search and reference chats" to off.

Anthropic's Claude Can Now Recall Past Chats on Demand

Anthropic's Claude has a new personalization feature that lets the chatbot sift through previous conversations or reference them when requested. This "searching past chats" feature is currently rolling out to Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers; availability is expected to expand soon. You don't have to do anything special to get started. Once available, the feature will be enabled by default, and you can provide simple text prompts to recall what you discussed previously. In a YouTube demo, a user is seen asking the chatbot, "I'm back from vacation! What were we working on last week?" In response, the chatbot brings up previous projects and asks the user what they'd like to discuss. Unlike ChatGPT's Memory feature, which OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman says will "get to know you over your life," Claude will only search specific chats or projects when prompted. The idea is to help you maintain focus and "seamlessly continue projects" versus building an AI profile. Still, you can't exclude past chats from conversation chats unless you delete them. To stop Claude from searching past chat entirely, go to Settings > Profile > Preferences and turn off Search and reference chats. Google's Gemini, Meta AI, and Microsoft's Copilot have similar memory features.

Claude can now reference past chats, if you want it to

Claude is getting a better, if selective, memory. Rather than acting as perfect catalog of everything you've talked about or shared, Anthropic says the AI chatbot now has the ability to reference past chats when asked, so you don't have to re-explain yourself. The feature seems like it could help you pick up a work project after time away, or query Claude for the details of a past research session that you don't quite remember. The key point is that Claude has to be prompted: It doesn't call on past chats unless you specifically ask it to. Anthropic also says that Claude's ability to reference chats is specific to the workspace and project you're working in. Anthropic's implementation is much more limited in scope compared to how ChatGPT's memory feature works. OpenAI updated ChatGPT in April to save all conversations you have with it, and rely on those records to personalize answers to any new question or prompt you send. The basic idea is that every conversation could improve the chatbot's responses. Google lets Gemini similarly recall past conversations and has also tested using Google Search history to further personalize AI responses. In contrast to both, Claude is really only performing a search of past conversations when asked, not referencing a profile of past chats. It's more privacy-minded by default and you can disable Claude's ability to do it at all via a settings toggle. If you're subscribed to the Max, Team or Enterprise plans, Claude's new ability should be rolling out now, according to Anthropic. The company says the feature will expand to other plans soon.

Claude just got a major personalization upgrade -- here's what's new

Anthropic is giving Claude a personal touch with a new wave of updates that include: chat history search, custom preferences, project-based instructions and tone controls; all aimed at making Claude feel less like a one-size-fits-all chatbot and more like a true AI assistant. Today's update rolls out four big personalization features: Anthropic's upgrades shift Claude from a static assistant into a more adaptive partner, making it feel far more personal. So now, users doing everything from drafting professional emails or outlining a novel, to planning a trip, can expect Claude to adapt its personality and structure to fit the task. The chat history search also removes friction for long-term projects by letting you pick up exactly where you left off. Anthropic is also testing a memory feature that could take personalization further by letting Claude remember details from previous conversations, similar to what users experience with ChatGPT. While this could make the assistant even more helpful for ongoing work, it raises familiar questions around privacy and data retention. If those memory capabilities launch alongside the new personalization tools, Claude could become one of the most context-aware AI assistants yet, and a serious competitor to ChatGPT for users who value long-term consistency. Follow Tom's Guide on Google News to get our up-to-date news, how-tos, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.

You can now give Claude access to memories of previous conversations, but only if you want to

The feature is rolling out first to Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers before expanding to other plans Anthropic has given Claude a memory upgrade, but it will only activate when you choose. The new feature allows Claude to recall past conversations, providing the AI chatbot with information to help continue previous projects and apply what you've discussed before to your next conversation. The update is coming to Claude's Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers first, though it will likely be more widely available at some point. If you have it, you can ask Claude to search for previous messages tied to your workspace or project. However, unless you explicitly ask, Claude won't cast an eye backward. That means Claude will maintain a generic sort of personality by default. That's for the sake of privacy, according to Anthropic. Claude can recall your discussions if you want, without creeping into your dialogue uninvited. By comparison, OpenAI's ChatGPT automatically stores past chats unless you opt out, and uses them to shape its future responses. Google Gemini goes even further, employing both your conversations with the AI and your Search history and Google account data, at least if you let it. Claude's approach doesn't pick up the breadcrumbs referencing earlier talks without you asking it to do so. Adding memory may not seem like a big deal. Still, you'll feel the impact immediately if you've ever tried to restart a project interrupted by days or weeks without a helpful assistant, digital or otherwise. Making it an opt-in choice is a nice touch in accommodating how comfortable people are with AI currently. Many may want AI help without surrendering control to chatbots that never forget. Claude sidesteps that tension cleanly by making memory something you summon deliberately. But it's not magic. Since Claude doesn't retain a personalized profile, it won't proactively remind you to prepare for events mentioned in other chats or anticipate style shifts when writing to a colleague versus a public business presentation, unless prompted mid-conversation. Further, if there are issues with this approach to memory, Anthropic's rollout strategy will allow the company to correct any mistakes before it becomes widely available to all Claude users. It will also be worth seeing if building long-term context like ChatGPT and Gemini are doing is going to be more appealing or off-putting to users compared to Claude's way of making memory an on-demand aspect of using the AI chatbot. And that assumes it works perfectly. Retrieval depends on Claude's ability to surface the right excerpts, not just the most recent or longest chat. If summaries are fuzzy or the context is wrong, you might end up more confused than before. And while the friction of having to ask Claude to use its memory is supposed to be a benefit, it still means you'll have to remember that the feature exists, which some may find annoying. Even so, if Anthropic is right, a little boundary is a good thing, not a limitation. And users will be happy that Claude remembers that, and nothing else, without a request.

Claude Can Now Remember and Provide a Reference to Past Conversations

Anthropic recently introduced new rate limits for paid subscribers Anthropic is adding a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature to its Claude chatbot. On Monday, the San Francisco-based AI firm announced a new feature that will enable Claude to recall and reference previous conversations with the user. With this, users can pick up a conversation from where they left off. This can potentially save users the trouble of manually searching through past chats to restart conversations about incomplete projects. Notably, the feature is currently being rolled out to specific paid subscription tiers. In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), the official handle of Claude announced the new chat reference feature. It is currently being rolled out to the platform's Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers. The company said that other plans, including Pro, will get the feature soon. It is unclear whether Anthropic plans to expand the feature to the free tier of the platform. Referencing older chats is not a novel feature among AI-powered chatbots. OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini already offer this capability to all their users, including those on the free tier. This feature typically uses a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) process to retrieve data from older conversations when prompted to do so, or when the chatbot deems it necessary. However, Anthropic, which added the two-way voice conversation and web search features in May 2025, has typically been slow to integrate new features into its chatbot. The new feature is sure to help users who frequently use Claude and need to scroll endlessly to find a previous chat. The new system allows them to ask the chatbot about a conversation, and it can not only fetch information but also build on that task. Last month, the company introduced new weekly rate limits for its paid subscribers due to a select minority abusing the existing policy of resetting rate limits every five hours. At the time, the AI firm stated that some users were running Claude Code continuously, resulting in usage worth tens of thousands of dollars. With this new past chat reference feature, some users have expressed concerns that retrieving information from an information-dense chat could lead to users hitting the rate limit earlier. The company has not mentioned if the feature consumes tokens.