One of the best reasons to get a ChatGPT account instead of having temporary chats with OpenAI’s chatbot is the ability to save the more important conversations. ChatGPT might give you useful guides you’ll want to revisit. For me, that includes travel and visiting plans or marathon training routines.
Load the ChatGPT app on your desktop or mobile device, and you can return to those chats as often as needed. You can continue or update the conversations at any time. You can also save some of the ChatGPT Deep Research as PDF documents to use elsewhere or share with friends.
But there’s also a lot of junk chats I have with the AI that don’t need to stick around. These clutter the app and make scrolling a pain.
You can delete chats you don’t need or archive them for later, but the deletion process is clunky since you can only erase one chat at a time. Luckily, there’s a really simple way to bulk-delete multiple chats at once, and I’ve been using it to clean up my app.
This has nothing to do with the fact that OpenAI is required to retain deleted chats for a while. That’s a court-mandated action tied to a trial involving The New York Times.
The lawsuit
As a ChatGPT user, I was glad to see OpenAI push back hard against the court’s decision. Sam Altman posted a message on X, and OpenAI released a blog post to explain the situation.
“Recently, the NYT asked a court to force us to not delete any user chats. We think this was an inappropriate request that sets a bad precedent,” Altman wrote. “We are appealing the decision.”
“We will fight any demand that compromises our users’ privacy; this is a core principle,” he added.
As someone who values privacy more than anything when it comes to AI, I’m glad OpenAI and Altman responded so strongly. I want personalized AI experiences from ChatGPT, but I won’t trust OpenAI with my data until I know it’s fully protected. This reaction is a good start.
Still, deleted chats can currently be accessed. Normally, chats are deleted 30 days after you erase them. OpenAI is now forced to keep them indefinitely, with only specific people allowed access:
The content covered by the court order is stored separately in a secure system. It’s protected under legal hold, meaning it can’t be accessed or used for purposes other than meeting legal obligations.
Only a small, audited OpenAI legal and security team would be able to access this data as necessary to comply with our legal obligations.
In the future, I’ll want my chats with a ChatGPT super-assistant to be encrypted so no one can access them after deletion. We’ll deal with that when the first ChatGPT io device launches.
As for the NYT request, I can’t say I blame them. I want privacy from AI chatbots, but I also think AI companies shouldn’t train chatbots with copyrighted content without permission. That’s what this lawsuit is really about. The paper might need data from those chats to prove OpenAI trained ChatGPT using NYT content.
How to delete ChatGPT chats
The hard and annoying way
Copyright lawsuits aside, I’ll still delete ChatGPT chats to clean up the app. The most straightforward way to do it is to tap the three-dot menu next to a chat and select Delete.
Then press Delete again in the prompt that appears.
The steps are similar on mobile. You’ll need to press and hold on a chat to see the Delete option.
You’ll have to repeat this for every chat. There’s no mass-delete option.
You can choose Archive instead of Delete.
Your Archive is in the Settings app. To empty it, you’ll still have to delete each chat one at a time.
The super easy way
I wish I’d figured out a way to mass-delete chats from the start. Sadly, I went through dozens of manual deletions before finding the fast method.
Instead of deleting chats one by one, add them to a temporary folder.
In the ChatGPT menu, tap the New Project icon and create a new folder. I made a folder called to-delete for this example.
Choose a chat you want to delete, tap the three-dot menu, and select Add to project.
Repeat for all chats you want to erase. Once you hit the folder limit, go to that folder’s three-dot menu and select Delete project.
Create a new folder, fill it with chats to be trashed, and delete it when full.
This also works in the mobile app.
Hopefully, OpenAI will improve chat management in the future. Until then, I’ll stick with this trick to bulk-delete the chats I don’t need.
A few more things to consider
Before deleting anything, remember there’s no trash folder to recover mistakenly deleted chats. Be careful. The trick above creates a kind of temporary trash folder, so you can double-check its contents before deleting it.
You can also delete all your chats from the Settings menu if needed. The same menu lets you delete your ChatGPT account if you want to go all the way.
Once the NYT copyright case is resolved, OpenAI will likely resume deleting chats 30 days after deletion. If OpenAI wins its appeal, that could happen even before there’s a final verdict.
Whatever happens, I still expect OpenAI to roll out stronger privacy features down the line.
I also hope OpenAI gives us better tools to manage chats, including deleting them. The ability to select multiple chats, drag them into folders, or move them to a Trash folder is exactly what the ChatGPT apps need.
The post The trick to deleting ChatGPT chats faster – and what the NYT lawsuit means appeared first on BGR.
