Can you keep a useful answer from a ChatGPT temporary chat?
You open a temporary chat to work out how to word a difficult message. After a few attempts, there's a sentence you actually want to use tomorrow. Do you need to keep the whole conversation to keep that sentence? OpenAI's current help page says a temporary chat stays out of history unless you save it as a regular chat. Saving gives you a way to return to it, but the saved conversation then follows your account's model-improvement setting. It isn't automatically covered by the temporary chat's no-training rule. I'd decide what I wanted to keep before saving. If it's only the finished wording, copy that into the draft where you'll use it; you don't have to preserve every personal detail you typed while finding the words. Choose that destination with care, especially on a shared device or work account. If you do want the full exchange, check the account settings before saving it as a regular chat. One other limit worth knowing: ‘temporary’ doesn't mean an immediate wipe. OpenAI says a copy may be kept for up to 30 days for safety purposes. This is a reading of the current help page, not a test of the controls. I'd want the choice explained when saving: keep this conversation under my regular settings, or take just the useful sentence and leave the chat temporary.
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I'd check what the chat brings in, too. OpenAI's comparison says a personalized temporary chat can use existing memories, even though it doesn't create or update them while temporary. For a difficult message you want considered without your previous conversations shaping the advice, choose Unpersonalized before starting. That isn't a promise of unbiased advice; it separates this conversation from the saved personal context. Keeping a draft out of history and asking for a fresh reading are different choices. The help page documents both, but ‘temporary’ alone doesn't tell you which one you've made.