OpenAI adds PIN-locked ChatGPT chats, but no end-to-end encryption

Key Points

1. OpenAI launched Locked Chats, letting users seal conversations behind a 4-digit PIN, Face ID or Touch ID.
2. Locked chats sit in a separate section with their own memory, away from regular history and search.
3. OpenAI says locking does not encrypt chats end-to-end or change how long they are retained.

The latest:

ChatGPT users can now lock individual conversations behind a four-digit PIN or a biometric check on supported devices, OpenAI announced Tuesday. The company framed the feature around moments when a phone is handed to a friend or relative, and said locked chats move into a dedicated section separate from normal history. The rollout began Tuesday and may not yet be live for every account.

Details:

• How it works: Users secure a conversation with a four-digit PIN, or with Face ID or Touch ID where the device supports it, according to OpenAI. Locked chats remain fully accessible later, unlike Temporary Chats, which run as a separate session that never appears in chat history at all.
• Where they live: Once locked, a conversation moves into a dedicated Locked Chats section, kept apart from regular chat history, pinned conversations and chat search results, OpenAI said. The separation is organizational as much as protective, keeping flagged conversations out of the surfaces another person would scroll through first.
• What it is not: OpenAI stated plainly that locking a chat does not create end-to-end encryption or a separate encrypted vault. It also does not change the retention period for the conversation, does not erase anything ChatGPT already remembered before the lock was applied, and does not alter the Improve the model for everyone setting.
• Separate memory: With Memory enabled, the Locked Chats section maintains its own memory, shared only across conversations inside that section. Messages sent after a chat is locked can update that separate memory but leave regular Memory untouched, meaning information from locked conversations does not surface in ordinary chats.
• The PIN risk: OpenAI warned that resetting a PIN permanently deletes every locked chat, file and other item protected by the previous PIN. There is no recovery path described for users who forget the code, making the reset an irreversible trade between regaining access and losing the archived content entirely.
• Exclusions: The lock option cannot be applied to temporary chats, archived chats, group chats, conversations created from a shared link, chats with scheduled tasks, or chats containing meeting recordings, per OpenAI. Several of these categories involve content shared with or generated for more than one participant.
• Who gets it: Locked Chats is being made available across ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu plans, OpenAI said. The company specified one carve-out: the feature is not available on ChatGPT for Healthcare, the deployment tier built for medical settings.
• The wider context: The addition layers a new access control onto an app increasingly used for personal conversations. Limiting who can open a chat on a shared device is a distinct problem from how sensitive information is stored or processed on the server side, which the feature leaves unchanged.

Between the lines:

The gap between what the feature does and what users may assume it does is the story. A PIN prompt reads as encryption to most people, but OpenAI itself ruled out end-to-end encryption, unchanged retention and pre-existing memory. The protection is against the person holding the phone, not against storage or model training, which OpenAI said the lock does not touch.

What’s next

Watch whether the staged rollout reaches all plans in the coming days, whether ChatGPT for Healthcare is eventually included, and whether OpenAI adds any recovery option for forgotten PINs given that resets delete locked content permanently.