Capability 13
Private or temporary chat.
Exact name Private or temporary chat
Step 01 · ChatWhat it is.
A chat that stays out of your saved history, and usually out of memory. What the vendor still keeps, and for how long, differs a lot.
What your tool calls it.
- Temporary chat: A ChatGPT conversation that stays out of history and does not create memories unless you save it as a regular chat.
- incognito chats: Claude conversations that are not saved to chat history and do not read from or write to Claude's memory.
- Temporary chat (Gemini): A Gemini conversation left out of recent chats and Gemini Apps Activity, and not used for personalisation.
- temporary chat: A Copilot conversation that neither uses nor updates memory and is not kept in your visible chat history.
- Incognito mode: A Perplexity session that is not kept in your threads and is invisible to memory. Enterprise admins can force it on.
- Private Chat: A Grok conversation that does not appear in your history and is deleted from xAI systems within a month.
- Incognito chat: A Meta AI chat run through Meta's Private Processing that is not kept in Meta AI chat history after you leave it.
- Temporary Chat: A one-off conversation kept out of your history, search, Knowledge Base and training. Mistral logs only that one took place.
Three words for one idea: temporary (ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft, Mistral), incognito (Claude, Perplexity, Meta) and private (Grok).
What each vendor says it keeps.
| Vendor | Name | Kept for | Memory | Training |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Temporary chat | "up to 30 days for safety purposes" | "Does not create or update memories while temporary" | "not used to improve OpenAI models while it remains temporary" |
| Claude | incognito chats | "30 days (default), or longer in accordance with your organization's custom data retention setting" | "won't use Claude's existing memory" | "Incognito chats are not used for training." |
| Gemini | Temporary chat | "retained with your account for 72 hours" | "won't be used to personalize your Gemini experience" | "not used to train Google's AI models" |
| Microsoft Copilot | temporary chat | "your organization's data retention policy might require retaining temporary chat data" | "without using or updating memory" | Copilot Chat generally: "Prompts and responses aren't used to train the underlying foundation models." |
| Perplexity | Incognito mode | "expire within 24 hours and are not recoverable" | "Memory and previous searches are always off" | no first-party statement found |
| Grok | Private Chat | "deleted from SpaceXSI systems within 30 days", unless needed "for legal, compliance, or safety purposes" | no first-party statement found | "not used for model training" |
| Meta AI and Muse | Incognito chat (rolling out) | "won't be saved, stored, or appear in your Meta AI chat history" | no first-party statement found | no first-party statement found |
| Mistral Vibe | Temporary Chat | "We only log that a Temporary Chat happened, not its content" | excluded from "memory" | excluded from "model training" |
These come from one research pass, mostly from search engines' copies of the vendors' pages, so none has been checked on the vendor's own page yet. Check your vendor's page before relying on it.
Why it matters.
The name is not a promise. A "temporary" chat can be kept for weeks, and an "incognito" one can follow your company's own retention rules. Read your vendor's line, not the label.
What the vendors say ranges from conversations that "won't be saved, stored, or appear in your Meta AI chat history" (Meta), and logging only that the chat happened, though "data may be retained where legally required" (Mistral), to up to 30 days (ChatGPT, Claude, Grok). Claude and Grok can keep it longer for an organisation's settings or for legal reasons, and Microsoft defers to your organisation's policy.
Words that trip people up.
- Private Processing at Meta is the technology behind Incognito chat, not a mode you choose. More on these words →
Next to it.
One step up.
Step 02 · Context that sticksSave your documents and instructions once. It remembers them.
What this step asks of you.
Use an approved business account, not a personal one. Have a written rule on what can be pasted in.
Where we can help.
What should your people use when the conversation is sensitive? That's the kind of question an Enable — Checkup settles. It leaves you with a written AI policy and a starting point for deciding what's allowed, including where the line is on client data.