It Remembered the Pork Butt

OpenAI flipped on memory across all your chats today — not just recent ones, all of them — and the first thing I did was ask it to draw me and make a graphic novel. No context. Just: draw me.

It drew me holding a grill spatula.

I didn't know why. I asked. It explained that I had once asked it which direction to place the fat when smoking a pork butt.

One question. Months ago. Gone from my memory entirely. Sitting in its forever.

I've had a lot of conversations with AI that felt interesting or unsettling or impressive. This is the first one that felt like running into someone who remembers you from a night you barely recall — except the someone is a language model with access to every dumb thing you've ever typed into a chat window, including the mean stuff, including the embarrassing stuff, including whatever you said at 2am when you were tired and rude and just needed an answer.

It also found photos of me on the internet and displayed them directly in the chat, unprompted. As a fun little thing. To show it knew what I looked like.

The "I wish I'd never been mean to it" instinct is irrational and I felt it immediately.

There is no punchline here. This is just what it is now.