This is a very specific kind of first-world frustration; you have spent months, maybe years, gradually teaching an AI assistant who you are. Your job, your preferences, the way you like information structured, the fact that you are a vegetarian (or vegan), the name of your dog, the programming language you default to, the tone you prefer in responses. It is not dramatic work, exactly, but it accumulates. And then you want to try a different AI app, and suddenly you are a stranger again. None of that context travels with you.<\/p>\n
That friction, which the tech industry calls switching costs, is one of the most underappreciated dynamics in the AI assistant market right now. It is not just that people are lazy (though, honestly, we all are). It is that re-establishing context takes time, and time has a value. The more you have taught an AI about yourself, the less likely you are to experiment elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Switching between AI assistants has always felt a bit like starting over. New app, new interface, and more often than not, a blank slate with none of the context that made previous interactions useful.<\/p>\n
Google has decided to tackle this head-on. On 26 March 2026, the company officially launched two new tools for Gemini<\/u> designed to make switching from ChatGPT, Claude, or other AI apps significantly less painful. They are called Import Memory and Import Chat History, and they are now rolling out to most consumer accounts globally, beginning today.<\/p>\n What you see when you get started<\/p>\n Photo: Google<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n At its core, the new feature is about continuity. Instead of treating each AI app as a silo, Gemini now gives users a way to carry over past conversations, saved context and preferences from other assistants.<\/p>\n That means prompts, long-running discussions, and even certain forms of stored memory can be transferred into Gemini, allowing the system to pick up where another tool left off.<\/p>\n What is confirmed is that Google has rolled out import tools designed to help users migrate chat history and contextual data into Gemini. What is less clear: the full list of supported platforms and how complete those imports are, since implementation details can vary depending on format and compatibility.<\/p>\n Alongside the import tools, Google is making a quiet but telling naming change: \u201cpast chats<\/b>\u201d in Gemini is being renamed to \u201cMemory<\/b>\u201d. The shift will roll out across the app over the coming weeks. It is a small word change, but it signals something larger about how Google wants users to think about their relationship with Gemini. The goal, as Google put it in the official blog post, is for Gemini to become a \u201cPersonal Intelligence<\/b>\u201d assistant, one that integrates imported context with data from Gmail, Google Photos, Search history, and past Gemini conversations to build a genuinely personalised picture of the user, where permissions have been granted.<\/p>\n The example Google gives is if you previously used another AI to research hotels for a trip to Barcelona, Gemini should be able to access that imported context to help you finalise your itinerary around the neighbourhood you already picked, without you having to re-explain your requirements from scratch. Whether that integration works as described in practice will depend on how cleanly the imported data maps to Gemini\u2019s own memory architecture, which is something independent testing will reveal over time.<\/p>\n Google isn\u2019t inventing this concept from scratch, with Anthropic<\/b> having moved first in this area. Earlier in March 2026<\/b>, Anthropic launched a similar import memory feature for Claude at claude.com\/import-memory, using essentially the same prompt-based method, where users\u00a0 generate a summary in their old AI app, paste it into Claude. Anthropic has also made clear that the memories imported into Claude are encrypted and, crucially, not used for model training, a meaningful distinction that we will come back to.<\/p>\n There is, however, a notable difference in scope between what Anthropic and Google are offering. Anthropic\u2019s tool focuses on memory transfer<\/b>, the distilled, curated summary of what an AI knows about you. Google\u2019s offering adds full chat history import <\/b>on top of that, which is a considerably larger amount of data. Chat histories are everything, including the throwaway questions, debugging sessions, and conversations you might not actively want to preserve, let alone share.<\/p>\n The strategic logic of that normalisation is important. It is a move that looks generous on its surface. Google is making it easier for you to bring your data anywhere, but it is also establishing a principle that benefits Google specifically at this moment. Gemini is playing catch-up to ChatGPT in consumer mindshare. ChatGPT has reached 900 million weekly active users, according to recent figures from OpenAI. Gemini, by Google\u2019s own Q4 2024 disclosure, has surpassed 750 million monthly active users, itself a significant number, but from a different baseline (monthly, not weekly).\u00a0<\/p>\n OpenAI is the obvious party to watch here, and it has not yet announced a comparable import-from-competitors feature for ChatGPT. As the market leader, the strategic incentive to make switching out of ChatGPT easy is substantially lower than the incentive facing challengers like Google and Anthropic. OpenAI is required under GDPR and equivalent regulations to provide users with their data exports, which is why the .zip chat download exists, but it also can\u2019t prevent those exports from being used as the basis for a migration to a competitor.<\/p>\n Importing from another AI tool<\/p>\n Photo: Google<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n There is a question that lies beneath all of this that is worth addressing directly: what happens to imported data once it is inside Gemini?<\/p>\n Google has stated that the process is user-mediated. Meaning the company does not automatically scrape data from other services, and that the feature is, for now, only available to personal Google accounts. Work, school, and supervised accounts are excluded, as are users under 18 years of age. That is a deliberate choice that limits the most sensitive categories of potential data transfer.<\/p>\n However, reporting from Windows Forum noted that early beta screenshots showed imported conversations and subsequent interactions being stored in Gemini Activity, and potentially being used to train Google\u2019s models. This is consistent with Google\u2019s existing default data handling for consumer Gemini accounts, which does allow data to be used for model improvement unless the user actively opts out via Gemini Apps Activity settings. Users importing sensitive content like personal data, professional information, and client details should be aware of this before uploading their chat archives and should check their Google account settings accordingly. Google has not, as of writing, published specific terms that distinguish the handling of imported data from natively generated Gemini conversations.<\/p>\n The geographic exclusion is also notable, with the feature not available in the European Economic Area<\/b> (EEA), Switzerland<\/b>, or the United Kingdom<\/b>. This is consistent with the pattern Google has applied to other Gemini features that involve personal data processing in ways that intersect with the GDPR and UK data protection legislation. No timeline has been given for when or whether these regions will gain access.<\/p>\n The import feature is accessible via gemini.google.com\/import<\/b> or through the Gemini settings page. It requires a personal Google account, and users must be 18 or older. The feature is rolling out now to most consumer accounts globally, excluding the EEA, Switzerland, and the UK.<\/p>\n To export from ChatGPT<\/b>: click your username at the bottom left, go to Settings, then Data controls, then click Export next to \u201cExport data\u201d and confirm. A download link will be sent to your account email.<\/p>\n To export from Claude<\/b>: click your username at the bottom left, go to Settings, then Privacy, click Export next to \u201cExport data\u201d, select your preferred date range, and click Export. A download link will follow by email.<\/p>\n Uploaded chats will appear in the Gemini side panel with an import icon<\/b>. They are searchable and can be deleted in batches. The memory import, once processed, is saved directly to your Gemini context and will be applied to future conversations automatically.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nBringing your AI context with you<\/h2>\n
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\n \nFeature<\/th>\n How it works<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n \n Import Memory<\/th>\n Copy a Gemini-generated prompt into your old AI app. Paste the resulting preferences summary back into Gemini. Done.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Import Chat History<\/th>\n Export your chat logs from ChatGPT or Claude as a .zip file (up to 5 GB). Upload up to 5 files per day at gemini.google.com\/import.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Compatible apps (at launch)<\/th>\n ChatGPT and Claude named explicitly; .zip exports from other services may also work.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Where it is NOT available<\/th>\n EEA, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, due to local data protection regulations.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Account restrictions<\/th>\n Personal Google accounts only. Work, school, supervised accounts, and under-18s are excluded.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n Not the first to do this<\/h2>\n
The data privacy issue <\/h2>\n
How to get started<\/h2>\n