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| The new privacy center in ChatGPT gathers seven topics and points to Settings for every change. |
OpenAI has quietly added a new item to ChatGPT’s menu this week: the Privacy Center. It lives under the Help section of the account menu, and it pulls seven privacy-related topics into one place—everything from memory and ads to deleting your account. OpenAI announced the addition in the ChatGPT release notes on Monday. The important catch? The page itself doesn’t change a single setting.
Where to find it and who can use it
On the web, open your account menu, choose Help, then select Privacy center. On iOS and Android, the entry sits under Settings instead. You can also go straight to chatgpt.com/privacy-center. In a quick check on Tuesday morning using a European Free-plan account, the page was already fully localized.
OpenAI says the Privacy Center is available to signed-in users on the Free, Go, Plus, Pro, and Business plans across the web and the iOS and Android apps. Enterprise, Edu, and ChatGPT for Healthcare accounts are left out for now. The rollout is gradual, and OpenAI is upfront about that: “If you don’t see Privacy Center, it may not be available for your account or app version yet.” Which of the seven topics you actually see depends on your plan, region, account, and workspace settings.
What’s inside—and what isn’t
The topics are split into three groups. Personalized chats and ads covers memory, personalized ads, and location. Chat privacy contains a single topic: temporary chat. Data use and access covers plugins and apps, multi-factor authentication, model improvement, and exporting or deleting your data. Each topic opens a panel with three or four questions and a Manage button. That button includes a small arrow because it takes you out of the Privacy Center and into Settings.
OpenAI is clear about the limit in its own documentation: “Your privacy controls remain in Settings.” The center explains what each control does and helps you find it. That’s where its job ends. As OpenAI puts it, “Opening the privacy center does not change your settings, delete your data, or override your organization’s policies.” Think of it as a map, not a switchboard.
Three details worth pausing for
The memory panel asks what to do when you don’t want ChatGPT to remember something. The answer is more involved than one click. “Deleting a chat does not automatically delete a memory saved from it,” the Privacy Center notes. OpenAI’s memory in ChatGPT documentation lays out the full process: delete the saved memory and the chat where you first shared the information, then work through the memory summary, saved memories, regular and archived chats, files in Library, and connected apps.
Model improvement is another one. OpenAI limits it to future chats. Switch it off, and your upcoming conversations stay out of the models. But whatever is already in your account stays put. “Turning it off does not delete your chats or remove them from your history,” OpenAI says, and your memory settings don’t move either. We covered the same gap in our piece on the training toggle.
The third detail covers ads. Turning off personalization doesn’t remove the ads themselves. “If you turn off ads personalization, you will still see ads based on the context of your current chat thread,” OpenAI writes. Its ads in ChatGPT documentation is even blunter: turning personalization off “doesn’t remove ads.” Only the Free and Go plans see ads at all, and OpenAI notes that personalized ads are not initially available in the European Economic Area or Switzerland. Advertisers don’t receive the underlying material—no chats, no chat history, no memories, no personal details.
How to get something out of the visit
The Privacy Center is most useful as an inventory. Walk the seven topics from top to bottom and select Manage on each one. You’ll then pass through every switch that applies to your account. Two are worth the minute they cost: multi-factor authentication and the list of connected apps. Data use and access also holds the export of your own data and the button that deletes your account for good.
What the center leaves out is the trail ChatGPT lays outside the app—including, among other things, the __obi cookie on third-party sites. So use the Privacy Center as a starting point, not a finish line. It’s a helpful guide to ChatGPT’s privacy controls, but the real changes still happen in Settings.