Yesterday, OpenAI introduced a new feature under the radar that I think might have just changed everything.

ChatGPT has had a rudimentary “memory” system for quite some time. It lets the model look for important context in your messages, like your job or a particular spot you enjoy. It then saves things that it thinks might be relevant to your conversations with it in the future and stores them in your settings for you to decide what may be worth saving or deleting. It is, in essence, a customizable data retrieval system on top of the model. You can tell ChatGPT to remember things or just wait for it to realize something was essential. This is still the system primarily in-use by free users, but plus and pro members are now beginning to have access to what was internally called “Moonshine.”

On the surface, Moonshine sounds very simple. ChatGPT can now reference your previous conversations. But in reality, it makes the tool dramatically more intelligent — and personal. By being able to reference things you have talked about before without hoping that the model would catch it or by manually teaching it, it feels more like talking with a person than ever before. Dare I say, ChatGPT actually knows me now.

My ChatGPT knows what my current goals are, what projects I am working on, and what I am generally thinking about. I was already popping in my AirPods and talking with ChatGPT voice mode about problems or briefly messaging it for advice on the fly throughout my day. But this takes it to a whole new level, it is never starting from scratch.

It may fundamentally now know more about who I am than any social media or search algorithm before it. And unlike those algorithms, it is actually information that can be put to good use for my sake. It is not worried about what kind of socks I might want to buy, what celebrities I may be crushing on, or trying to make me feel inadequate. It is never trying to sell or market to me. ChatGPT is trying to help me actually accomplish something, whether it is a personal or professional goal.

After just one day, I have already been having far more fruitful conversations with ChatGPT. It feels like a sneak peek at what virtual assistants can really be.