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ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests

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Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests

#31

Post by brap »

baby wrote: post #17
firesteelrain wrote: post #16

Just a note to those adding the time to the personalization response. It’s inaccurate. If you have an existing chat, the time is near the last time you had that chat session active. If you open a new one, it can be off by + or - 15 minutes for some reason

I was using a continuous conversation with chatgpt to keep track of my lifts, and then I realize it never understand what day I'm talking to it, like there is no consistency, it might as well be the date of the first message you sent

I think that’s exactly why they’re not including timestamps. If timestamps are shown in the UI users might expect some form of “time awareness” which it doesn’t quite have. Yes you can add it to the context but I imagine that might degrade other metrics.

Another possible reason is that they want to discourage users from using the product in a certain way (one big conversation) because that’s bad for content management.

Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests

#32

Post by malfist »

baby wrote: post #17
firesteelrain wrote: post #16

Just a note to those adding the time to the personalization response. It’s inaccurate. If you have an existing chat, the time is near the last time you had that chat session active. If you open a new one, it can be off by + or - 15 minutes for some reason

I was using a continuous conversation with chatgpt to keep track of my lifts, and then I realize it never understand what day I'm talking to it, like there is no consistency, it might as well be the date of the first message you sent

What purpose does logging your lifting with chatgpt achieve?

Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests

#34

Post by abadar »

I built a single page website that copies the current time to my clipboard and I paste it into my messages. It's inconvenient and I don't do it irregularly.

I'll have to look into the extension described in the link. Thank you for sharing. It's nice to know it's a shared problem.

Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests

#36

Post by cj »

mv4 wrote: post #33

Other than the potential liability, cost may also be a factor. Back in April 2025, Altman mentioned people saying "thank you" was adding “tens of millions of dollars” to their infra costs. Wondering if adding per-message timestamps would cost even more.

Presumably you could decouple timestamps from inference.

I would be very surprised if they don’t already store date/time metadata. If they do, it’s just a matter of exposing it.

Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests

#38

Post by stainablesteel »

mv4 wrote: post #33

Other than the potential liability, cost may also be a factor. Back in April 2025, Altman mentioned people saying "thank you" was adding “tens of millions of dollars” to their infra costs. Wondering if adding per-message timestamps would cost even more.

this is actually hilarious, also easily fixable if they just respond to that with a pre-determined

if response == 'thank you': print('your welcome')

Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests

#39

Post by jennyholzer2 »

vasco wrote: post #27
Workaccount2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regular people hate numbers. Not a joke. To capture a wide audience you want to avoid numbers, among other technical niceties.

> Regular people hate numbers What does this even mean

At the start of 2025 I stopped buying Spotify and started buying Apple Music because I felt manipulated by the Spotify application's metrics-first design.

I felt that Spotify was trying to teach me to rely on its automated recommendations in place of any personal "musical taste", and also that those recommendations were of increasingly (eventually, shockingly), poor quality.

The implied justification for these poor recommendations is a high "Monthly Listener Count". Don't mind that Spotify can guarantee that any crap will have a high listener count by boosting it's place in their recommendation algorithm.

I think many people may have a similar experience on once-thriving social media platforms like facebook/instragram/X.

What I mean to say is that I think people associate the experience of being continually exposed to dubiously sourced and dubiously relevant metrics with the feeling of being manipulated by illusions of scale.

Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests

#40

Post by journal »

You only need that info if you know you need it in your rag. Over the last two years of usage I don't recall where I'd need those timestamps but I know there are cases. Still, this would have to be an option because otherwise it would be waste of tokens. However, we have to consider they are competing for the quality AND length of the response even if a shorter response is better. There's a pretzel of considerations when talking about this.
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