Chats can be locked, and they are not encrypted

The IT Home page is stamped 2026/10/21 7:22:26. The judgment first: a conversation can be locked, and the lock is not encryption. The page says there is no end-to-end encryption and no separate encrypted store.

OpenAI announced on Tuesday, local time, that users can now lock a ChatGPT conversation. The situation it describes is that someone else might see the screen or use the device. The protection is a four-digit PIN. On devices that support them, Face ID or Touch ID can be used as well. The page does not list which devices those are.

This is not the same as a temporary chat. A temporary chat is a separate session and does not appear in the history. A locked chat can be opened again later. The situation OpenAI gives is a user discussing a private matter or planning a surprise, protecting that conversation, then handing the device to a friend or relative to show other conversations. That is a use written into the product description, not a security test.

The boundaries are specific, and they are a list of things the lock does not do. A locked chat does not turn on end-to-end encryption, and it does not create a separate encrypted store. It does not change how long conversation data is kept. It does not clear what ChatGPT had already remembered before the lock. It does not change the “help improve the model” setting. What the lock stops is another person opening that chat from the ordinary list on the device. It does not turn the contents into storage that only the holder can decrypt.

After a chat is locked, it moves into a separate locked-chat section, set apart from ordinary history, pinned chats, and chat search. If memory is on, that section has its own memory, shared only among chats inside the section. New messages sent after the lock can update that separate memory and do not change the general memory. The page’s claim is that new information from a locked chat does not enter ordinary chats. Information already remembered before the lock, by the sentence above, is not cleared.

Resetting the PIN deletes. It does not recover. The page says resetting the PIN permanently deletes every locked chat, file, and other item the old PIN protected. It does not say whether those can be exported first, or whether a mistaken reset can be undone.

Several kinds of chat cannot be locked: temporary chats, archived chats, group chats, chats created from a share link, chats with a scheduled task, and chats that contain a meeting recording. The plans that can use it are Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu. The medical ChatGPT cannot. The feature started rolling out in batches on Tuesday, local time, and not every user can use it immediately. The page does not say the order of the batches or the date they finish.