Google adds memories to the Gemini chatbot, staying a step ahead of Anthropic

Back in February, Google added memories to Gemini that allowed it to remember past conversations. Now, Google has announced a more personalized chat function, which it calls Personal Context. With this function, Gemini will now learn your preferences over time and craft responses based on those preferences. 

“The Gemini app can now reference your past chats to learn your preferences, delivering more personalized responses the more you use it,” said Gemini app senior director Michael Siliski in a blog post. 

In terms of functionality, Gemini will remember if you tell it that you like. Later, when you ask it to come up with ideas for you, it’ll take those preferences into consideration. For example, Google says, if you tell Gemini about your favorite comic book, and then later ask it to help you plan a themed birthday party specific to you, it may recommend that comic book as a theme. It’ll then help come up with themed food and party game ideas. 

It seems to be an iterative improvement on the current memory functions. In the prior iteration, you had to ask Gemini to specifically reference older chats in order for it to access that information (and sometimes, it would be unable to do so). Now, Gemini continuously learns and responds without you having to ask for it directly. The longer you talk to it, the more it’ll learn about you and the better tailored its responses will be. 

The new feature keeps Gemini ahead of Anthropic, which released its own chat memory function a couple of days ago for its Claude chatbot. Claude’s new memory works the way Gemini’s used to, where you have to specifically ask Claude to reference old chats and apply that knowledge to new conversations. 

Google is rolling out Personal Context starting today and expects the full rollout to take a couple of weeks. It’ll only be available in Gemini 2.5 Pro in select countries, with plans to expand it to Gemini 2.5 Flash and other countries in the coming weeks.