Google is rolling out an update for Gemini that will allow the AI chatbot to “remember” your past conversations without prompting. With the setting turned on, Gemini will automatically recall your “key details and preferences” and use them to personalize its output.
This expands upon an update that Google introduced last year, which lets you ask Gemini to “remember” your personal preferences and interests. Now, Gemini won’t need prompting to recall this information. As an example, Google says if you’ve used Gemini to get ideas for a YouTube channel surrounding Japanese culture in the past, then AI chatbot might suggest creating content about trying Japanese food if you ask it to suggest new video ideas in the future.
A recent New York Times article connected ChatGPT’s introduction of cross-chat memory in April to an increase in reports of “delusional” chats, and last week, OpenAI said it was working on more safety guardrails to detect mental or emotional distress.
When asked about this issue, Google spokesperson Elijah Lawal said Google is “constantly” trying to improve its safeguards. “Our focus has been building a personal AI assistant, and Gemini learning your preferences is key to this,” Lawal said. “Equally crucial is giving you easy controls to choose the experience that’s best for you, so you can turn this feature on and off at any time.”
Google will turn on this feature by default, but you can disable it by heading to your settings in the Gemini app and selecting Personal Context. From there, toggle off the Your past chats with Gemini option. Google will roll out this feature to its Gemini 2.5 Pro model in “select countries” starting today, before eventually bringing it to more locations and its Gemini 2.5 Flash model.
Google is making a change to its privacy settings, as well. In the “coming weeks,” Google will rename its “Gemini Apps Activity” setting to “Keep Activity.” When you enable this option, Google will use “a sample” of your file and photo uploads to Gemini to “help improve Google services for everyone” starting on September 2nd, according to its blog post. This setting is turned off by default, and Google notes that Your “Keep Activity” will also remain switched off if you’ve already disabled the “Gemini Apps Activity” setting.
You can also preserve privacy through a new “temporary chats” option in Gemini. Temporary chats won’t appear in your recent chats or your Keep Activity setting. Gemini also won’t use these chats to personalize future conversations, nor will Google use them to train its AI models. Google will only save these conversations for 72 hours. The says temporary chats could come in handy for “exploring private questions” or to prevent Gemini from referencing the details of the conversation in a future chat.
