OpenAI has begun the rollout of a new year-end recap experience inside ChatGPT, dubbed “Your Year with ChatGPT.” Think of it like Spotify Wrapped, but for your conversations: it collates high-level themes, usage stats, and a few fun “personality” style highlights of how you used ChatGPT across 2025.

What “Your Year with ChatGPT” is, and what it’s trying to do.

Your Year with ChatGPT is a free, personalized review of your 2025 usage of ChatGPT. According to OpenAI, it will be lightweight, privacy-forward, and user-controlled. That means:

It’s supposed to be fun and reflective, not some deep forensic analysis.

It’s not forced on you of its own accord-you choose whether to open it.

This is designed to show high-level themes and summary statistics, without exposing sensitive chat content by default.

It is a kind of feature that exists because AI tools have become part of everyday life: studying, writing, coding, planning, job preparation, brainstorming, entertainment-and many people want a quick way to answer: “How did I actually use this tool this year?” The recap turns that question into something you can scroll through like a story.

What it usually involves (the types of screens you may be exposed to)

OpenAI notes that the experience can vary from user to user, especially depending on how much you used ChatGPT and what settings you have enabled. But here’s what has been commonly reported across official notes and early user coverage:

1) High-level “themes” from your conversations

You will usually find a few top themes: broad categories which sum up what you talked about most. Examples might be things like learning, travel planning, coding help, career prep, or entertainment. Usually, this is not a list of your exact prompts, but a theme-based summary.

2) Usage statistics-the “numbers” part

The summary might include summary statistics like the following:

Total number of messages exchanged

Number of chats/conversations in total

Your “chattiest day” BUSIEST DAY

Other playful counts, with some coverage mentioning odd metrics such as punctuation habits.

OpenAI further observes that if your activity is very limited, you might only see basic chat statistics.

3) “Chat style” / archetype / awards: the playful part

Many year-in-review experiences add a layer of “personality”. This feature would make users receive, for example:

Describe a chat style-how you usually communicate, tone/approach.

A fun archetype label (such as a “type” of user )

Light-hearted awards that describe your patterns: e.g. you use it to tinker, debug, explore, plan, etc.

4. Creative extras: poem, pixel art, interactive bits

Some reports explain that the recap opens with a short creative intro – like a poem – and includes AI-generated pixel art inspired by your year’s themes, plus small interactive “future” cards.

Accessibility-who can access it, eligibility, and country rollout

That’s important because lots of people are going to search for this and not find it right away.

Interestingly, according to OpenAI’s Help Center FAQ and release notes:

Eligible account types

It is available to consumer ChatGPT users on:

Free, Plus, Pro in US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand

-and in India, it’s going to be for Go, Plus, Pro users as the rollout expands.

Not available for business/school org accounts

It is not available for:

Team

Enterprise

Education accounts

So even if someone uses ChatGPT via a workplace or university plan, they may not get the recap even after using ChatGPT extensively.

Settings that need to be turned ON

To generate it, you usually need:

Reference saved memories turned on.

Reference chat history on

And you have to pass a minimum threshold of activity, which really means that one used ChatGPT enough during 2025 to make useful statistics.

“Rolling out” reality

OpenAI says it’s going to be rolling out gradually, so even eligible people may not see it immediately.

How to Access It (Step by Step)

OpenAI says it would be available on the homepage of the mobile and web, if one is eligible for this version, and can also be invoked with direct requests.

OpenAI Help Center

Here’s the practical flow:

Update your ChatGPT app (iOS/Android) or refresh web at chatgpt.com.

Look for a banner/ entry point on the home screen.

If you don’t see it, try typing something like:

“Show me my year with ChatGPT.”

If it still doesn’t appear, check your settings for:

Memory / Reference saved memories

Reference chat history

It’ll fail to generate a summary if those are off.

Why Memory and “Reference chat history” matter here

A year-end recap can only be built if the system has permission to look back over your past interactions. That’s why such settings are required by the feature.

OpenAI defines Memory in two broad parts:

Saved memories: specific details ChatGPT remembers for future conversations, such as preferences.

Reference to past conversations: The ability to reference past conversations more generally – without saving everything as a “memory”.

OpenAI Help Center

Your Year with ChatGPT relies on the ability to reference your chats for pulling out patterns/themes and computing stats, hence the requirement for those settings.

Does it include Temporary Chats?

OpenAI says that it doesn’t use Temporary Chats. Temporary Chats aren’t supposed to reference or update memory, so they aren’t included in the summary.

Privacy: what the summary does – and doesn’t – suggest

When people hear “year-end summary, the first concern for many is: “Is ChatGPT saving everything I said?” The honest answer is: it depends on your settings and how ChatGPT is set up in your account-but OpenAI has published several clear controls and boundaries around this recap.

1. It’s optional and user-initiated

According to OpenAI, you don’t have to use it, and it won’t open up on its own.

2) It’s “privacy-forward” and high-level

The phrasing by OpenAI makes clear that it emphasizes high-level themes and summary stats, not a raw dump of the transcript.

3) Data controls still apply

OpenAI says that the summary is created in the same way as all other conversations with ChatGPT, and you will be able to return to it just like with a normal chat. That also means

You can delete it like any other chat.

If you delete it, OpenAI says it will be deleted within 30 days.

4) Training and “Improve the model for everybody”

OpenAI says, “It depends on the setting of “Improve the model for everyone”. This could allow whether or not your chats/memories may be used to improve models. Team/Enterprise/Education is not trained on by default.

So, the recap itself is not automatically “a training upload”—it’s a presentation built from your account’s allowed history. However, your broader chat content may be used for improvement if you opted into that setting, and you can turn it off in Data Controls.

5) Turning Memory on now

If you turn those settings on now, ChatGPT will begin referencing chat history for the recap, says OpenAI, though it may not show up immediately because “this process takes some time”.

Why some people don’t see it: most common reasons.

OpenAI enumerates several reasons you might not be able to see it:

Memory or Reference Chat History is off

Minimum activity threshold not met

You’re on Team/Enterprise/Education

This feature is still on a rollout to you.

You are not in a supported country

This is why, on launch week, two friends sitting next to each other can have different experiences-even with the same app version.
What “personalized insights” really means in practice
“Personalized insights” sounds daunting, but in these recaps, it really just means pattern recognition over your year.
Topic clustering: Group your conversations into a few top areas.

Behavioral summary: how you tend to ask questions: short vs detailed, casual vs formal.

Usage rhythm: when you used it most, on what days you used it most, how frequently.

OpenAI Help Center

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Business Insider

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Importantly, OpenAI frames it as “high-level themes,” so you should expect more “overview” than “here is what you said on March 12 at 9:41 pm.”

How you can use the recap in a genuinely useful way not just for fun

It’s easy to treat this as some kind of meme-share feature, but it can genuinely be of assistance.

1) Learning & skill-building reflection

If your top themes include things like “learning”, “coding”, “English practice”, or “exam prep”, that’s a signal that Chat GPT became part of your study workflow. You can use that to:

Identify your strongest learning areas this year

Notice gaps (“I did a lot of theory, but fewer practice problems”)

Set a simple goal for 2026; for example: “one mock test per week” or “each day speaking practice for 10 minutes.”

2) Productivity & work habits

This means that, when your chat peaks show you mostly used Chat GPT late-night or only during exam season, you might decide to

Establish a regular schedule

Use Chat GPT for weekly planning or revision

Make templates for repetitive tasks (notes, summaries, revision sheets)

3) Development of content and building of portfolio

Many have used Chat GPT for script ideas, captions, thumbnails, idea generation, and planning. If your recap suggests you’ve done a lot of “brainstorming,” it may prompt you to

Turn the best ideas into a content calendar

Create a repeatable process: idea → outline → draft → edit → publish

Save “best prompts” as a personal toolkit

4. Privacy Check-up

Because the summary requires Memory and Reference Chat History, this is a great time to do a brief audit of settings:

Check what memories are saved.

This populates the right-hand box. Delete anything that you don’t want to store. If you do not want to contribute data, make sure to turn the “Improve the model for everyone” setting OFF. What happens after it opens, how long it lasts OpenAI says: This experience is only available for a limited period of time to eligible users. Once opened, you can view it later as a normal conversation in your chat history. The deletion provokes the real deletion in about 30 days. While most people screenshot everything immediately just to “save” it, you don’t need to.