OpenAI on December 22, 2025 began offering a Spotify Wrapped–style annual recap called “Your Year with ChatGPT” to eligible users in select English-speaking markets, including the United States, Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand. The feature is available to individual accounts on free, Plus and Pro plans that have both “reference saved memories” and “reference chat history” enabled and that meet a minimum activity threshold, the company told TechCrunch. Team, Enterprise and Education accounts are excluded. OpenAI describes the experience as privacy-forward and user-controlled, and it appears on the app home screen without opening automatically.
Key takeaways
- Availability: The feature launched on December 22, 2025 in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand for eligible individual accounts.
- Eligible plans: Free, Plus and Pro subscribers can see the recap if they have both “reference saved memories” and “reference chat history” turned on and have met minimum conversation activity requirements.
- Exclusions: Team, Enterprise and Education accounts cannot access the year-in-review.
- Privacy claims: OpenAI states the experience is “lightweight, privacy-forward, and user-controlled,” and the recap is not opened automatically for users.
- Personalization features: The recap awards usage-based badges (e.g., “Creative Debugger”), generates a short poem and creates an image centered on topics the user engaged with during the year.
- Platforms: The feature is accessible on the ChatGPT web app and on iOS and Android mobile apps; users can also trigger it by asking ChatGPT directly.
Background
Consumer apps have popularized year-end recaps as a way to summarize user activity and drive engagement; Spotify Wrapped is the most prominent example and served as the template OpenAI referenced. Those wrap-style features typically pair bold visuals and short personalized insights with social-friendly assets users can share. Tech firms have increasingly balanced such marketing moments with privacy and controls after criticism over data use and surprise sharing features.
OpenAI has steadily expanded ChatGPT’s consumer features since 2022, adding multimodal outputs, memory and subscription tiers. In 2024–2025 the company emphasized user-control mechanisms—like opt-in memories and history toggles—to address regulatory scrutiny and user concerns. The new recap leans on those controls by requiring users to opt into both memory and chat-history references before the product will compile a year-in-review.
Main event
The rollout began December 22, 2025 to eligible accounts in five English-language markets. OpenAI communicated eligibility rules to TechCrunch by email, saying the recap is designed for individual users who have opted into the relevant settings and who pass a minimum activity threshold; the company did not publish the numerical threshold. The experience assembles awards based on behavioral signals—labels such as “Creative Debugger” for users who sought solutions or ideation—and produces a short poem plus an AI-generated image themed to the user’s dominant topics of interest.
OpenAI emphasized that Team, Enterprise and Education accounts are excluded, reflecting the feature’s consumer focus. The recap appears on the app home screen as a promotable tile but will not launch automatically or force users into the experience; users can also prompt the assistant directly with “Your Year with ChatGPT” to view their recap. The company said the feature is available on web, iOS and Android versions of the ChatGPT app.
At product level, the recap relies on the same user data surfaces that power personalized features: saved memories and chat history. OpenAI’s messaging to TechCrunch framed the recap as both lightweight and user-controlled; the company did not disclose the complete set of signals used to assign awards or how long recap artifacts are retained.
Analysis & implications
From a product standpoint, the recap is a low-cost engagement driver: it repackages existing telemetry into shareable narratives and imagery, which can boost time in app and social visibility without major new infrastructure. For OpenAI, this type of feature can re-engage dormant users and make subscription tiers feel more distinct by surfacing personalized outcomes tied to usage. It also follows a broader industry pattern where AI-driven recap and nostalgia features become regular annual moments for consumer services.
On privacy and regulatory fronts, the feature’s opt-in requirement (two settings enabled) and the company’s emphasis on being “privacy-forward” are notable. Those controls reduce the risk of unexpected profiling, but they do not eliminate questions about what precise signals are used or how long generated assets and summaries are stored. Regulators and privacy advocates will likely press for transparency on retention, deletion paths and whether the recap elements are used to tune models.
There are also content-moderation and brand-reputation considerations. The recap generates images and poems based on user interests; as ChatGPT expands to allow broader adult-content capabilities in 2026, content-safe defaults and clear opt-ins will be important to prevent brand and user harms. OpenAI’s decision to exclude organizational accounts lessens enterprise exposure but leaves individual users to manage personal safety settings.
Comparison & data
| Market | Availability | Eligible Plans |
|---|---|---|
| United States | Launched Dec 22, 2025 | Free, Plus, Pro (with settings enabled) |
| Canada | Launched Dec 22, 2025 | Free, Plus, Pro (with settings enabled) |
| United Kingdom | Launched Dec 22, 2025 | Free, Plus, Pro (with settings enabled) |
| Australia | Launched Dec 22, 2025 | Free, Plus, Pro (with settings enabled) |
| New Zealand | Launched Dec 22, 2025 | Free, Plus, Pro (with settings enabled) |
The table above summarizes availability and the plans that qualify. OpenAI provided eligibility criteria to TechCrunch but did not disclose the minimum conversation count or the retention window for recap artifacts. Compared with Spotify Wrapped—which publishes year-by-year consumption metrics at scale—ChatGPT’s recap is more limited in scope because it targets only users who have explicitly enabled memory and history features.
Reactions & quotes
“The experience is lightweight, privacy-forward, and user-controlled.”
OpenAI (statement to TechCrunch)
OpenAI framed the recap in privacy-centric terms when responding to questions from TechCrunch. That phrase signals an intent to limit default data use, but the company did not publish a technical whitepaper describing exactly how recap artifacts are generated or retained.
“Users can trigger ‘Your Year with ChatGPT’ directly by asking the assistant.”
OpenAI (feature description via TechCrunch)
The company confirmed the in-app tile is promotional and not automatically launched; users who prefer not to engage will not be forced into the experience. The ability to summon the recap via a prompt echoes other assistant-driven workflows that place control in the user’s hands.
“You might get an award like ‘Creative Debugger’ if you used the assistant for ideation or problem-solving.”
OpenAI (example shared with press)
OpenAI provided examples of awards to illustrate how the recap personalizes content. Those illustrative labels help users understand the feature’s intent, but they also raise questions about classification criteria and whether awards might mischaracterize nuanced usage.
Unconfirmed
- No public documentation lists the numerical activity threshold required to unlock the recap; OpenAI did not provide the exact figure to TechCrunch.
- It is not yet disclosed whether recap artifacts (poems, images, award labels) are used to further train underlying models or are retained beyond user-facing views.
- How the feature will handle adult or sensitive content after broader policy changes planned in 2026 is not specified and remains unclear.
Bottom line
OpenAI’s “Your Year with ChatGPT” is a familiar product play that repackages existing personalization signals into a shareable, year-end narrative. By restricting access to users who opt into memories and history and by excluding organizational accounts, the company has tried to strike a privacy-conscious balance while still delivering a high-engagement feature. However, lack of disclosure about the activity threshold, retention policies and model training use means key privacy and transparency questions remain.
For consumers, the feature offers a light, self-serve reflection on how they used ChatGPT across the year and an easy way to share those moments. For regulators and privacy-minded users, the rollout underscores the need for clearer documentation on signal use and data lifecycles; those disclosures will determine whether the recap becomes a benign engagement tool or a point of contention over data practices.