The AI session you can’t take with you
You save a chat with an AI assistant and assume the file is yours. More and more, it is only a pointer into that company’s servers, and the meaning comes back scrambled.
Your saved chat is only a pointer to the real session
Your machine holds your messages and the AI’s replies. The rest lives on the company’s servers.
Encrypted here means sealed for the company, not for you
One engineering team flips this around. Those parts are labeled encrypted. That label sounds like it protects you. But the company holds the key, and opens the data for its own models, not for you.
Stored by default, and continued with a ticket
The chat sits on the company’s servers by default. OpenAI’s system, behind ChatGPT, keeps it about thirty days. Google’s Gemini assistant stores it too. You continue by handing back the last reply’s ID, a ticket that only works on their computers.
The meaning comes back sealed, for only the company to open
{"type": "reasoning", "encrypted_content": "gAAAAAB..."}
{"type": "thinking", "thinking": "", "signature": "EqQBCg..."}
{"type": "thought", "summary": [], "signature": "EpoGCp..."}
Even if you save every reply, the parts that carry the meaning come back sealed. Three of them: the AI’s private working-out, the summary it writes to shrink a long chat, and even the messages its helper AIs send each other. Each returns as scrambled text only the company’s key can open. No other AI can read it, so your file cannot move.
The sealing has real upsides, and it is a choice
These companies have real reasons. The same sealing can power a mode that stores nothing, good for privacy. But the sealing is a choice. One assistant, Anthropic’s Claude, returns that summary as readable text you can steer. The objection is narrow: a better experience, tied to less of your control.
Portable means you could take the session elsewhere yourself
The team grants that most people never switch AIs mid-chat. The value is the option: a session you could export and continue on a different AI, with nothing to unlock.
