How to make ChatGPT and Google Bard forget you

The development of artificial intelligence has been going strong for years, but what helped really boost the popularity of the tech is AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Bard.

However, like your browser keeps track of the websites you have visited, all your chats with these AI are also stored. This is also necessary, as it helps these tools improve their responses over time. But not everyone may want their chats to exist on a cloud-based database.

If that sounds like you, you’ll be glad to know that OpenAI (the company that developed ChatGPT) lets you delete your account, and the chats it contains with it. Note that OpenAI will not let you sign up for a fresh account with the same email ID once you’ve deleted an account. If you still want to go through, here’s how to do it.

How to delete your OpenAI ChatGPT chats and account

To begin deleting your account, go to ChatGPT Settings. You can do this by navigating to the main ChatGPT page and clicking the three-dot menu on the bottom left, next to your account name. Choose ‘Settings’.

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In the following screen go to the ‘Data Controls’ tab, and you should see a red ‘Delete’ button under the Delete Account section. Click on the button and follow on-screen instructions. ChatGPT will also remind you that you will not be able to create a new account with the same email ID, and what deleting your account will include. Carefully go through the text and confirm your deletion.

If you simply want to erase particular conversations and not delete your entire account, you can also do that by clicking the trash bin icon next to each chat. To clear all chats, simply choose the ‘Clear Conversations’ option under the three-dot menu next to your account name.

How to delete your Google Bard chats and account

Google Bard also lets you easily delete your chats. The best part is this doesn’t have to affect your associated Google account as well. As a bonus, Bard also lets you setup an auto-delete period after which your chats will automatically be erased.

To do this, head to Google Bard and look for the ‘Bard Activity’ button. This should be the left-most icon on the top right of the main screen, and it should say Bard Activity when you hover over it. Click on the button to go to the activity page and you will see plenty of deleting options below.

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Choose the auto-delete option to delete activity older than three months, 18 months or 36 months. If you need more urgent deletion, scroll further down on the activity page to find a drop-down menu titled ‘Delete’. Under this drop-down, you can select the last hour, last day, set a custom deletion range or even delete all your chats. You can now either head back to Bard to start fresh, or simply choose to not use the tool.

That concludes our guide on how to delete ChatGPT and Google Bard chats. If you’re unsure about whether you’d want to keep your ChatGPT account or not in the future, we’d also suggest creating a fresh account for your ChatGPT needs, so you can always come back post-deletion with another ID if you need to.