{"693211":{"#nid":"693211","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Deleted AI Chats May Leave Clues Behind","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EDeleting a conversation with an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant may not erase everything the assistant remembers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech researchers have developed a tool that can recover deleted conversations from AI assistants running on Android phones. The tool, called \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/ieeexplore.ieee.org\/abstract\/document\/11573549\u0022\u003EORISA\u003C\/a\u003E, can also rebuild the recovered information into a working AI session.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe findings show that deleting an AI conversation on a phone does not necessarily mean it removes every trace.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe research could give digital investigators a new way to recover information from phones. It also raises privacy concerns for people who use AI assistants that run locally on their devices.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELocal AI assistants run directly on a phone rather than sending conversations to a cloud service. While the local assistant is running, information from conversations can remain in the phone\u2019s working memory even after it is deleted.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EORISA searches this memory for pieces of deleted conversations.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn one experiment, researchers created a fictional AI assistant called \u201cProject Note Keeper\u201d using the ChatterUI Android app. They gave it 100 fictional facts about a project, then deleted the conversation.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EORISA recovered information from the deleted conversation and used it to create a new working session. When researchers asked the restored assistant to list the project notes it had been given, it returned 26 facts. The original session could access only 14 facts because the rest had fallen outside its active memory.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe experiment showed that researchers could recover information the AI had already stopped actively using.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt can help establish what information someone shared with an AI assistant and what assistance they received,\u201d said Ph.D. student \u003Cstrong\u003EKen Xu\u003C\/strong\u003E, lead author of the study.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe researchers tested ORISA with 10 Android apps and three AI models. Across 60 test configurations, the tool recovered conversation information that remained in the phone\u2019s memory.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe researchers say the information becomes harder to recover as the phone\u2019s memory is overwritten by other activity.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe research was presented at the 2026 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. The paper, titled \u003Cem\u003ERecovering and Rehosting Mobile Local LLM Conversations and Contexts via Memory Forensics,\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/em\u003Ewas authored by Ph.D. students Xu, \u003Cstrong\u003EDavid Oygenblik\u003C\/strong\u003E, \u003Cstrong\u003ERunze Zhang\u003C\/strong\u003E, and \u003Cstrong\u003EMingxuan Yao\u003C\/strong\u003E; Research Scientist \u003Cstrong\u003EMuhammad Ibrahim\u003C\/strong\u003E; and Associate Professor \u003Cstrong\u003EBrendan\u003C\/strong\u003E \u003Cstrong\u003ESaltaformaggio\u003C\/strong\u003E. The work was done in Georgia Tech\u0027s \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/cyfi.ece.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003ECyber Forensics Innovation Laboratory\u003C\/a\u003E, a collaboration between the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/scp.cc.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003ESchool of Cybersecurity and Privacy\u003C\/a\u003E and the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.ece.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003ESchool of Electrical and Computer Engineering\u003C\/a\u003E.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EDeleting a locally stored AI conversation may remove it from view without eliminating its data. Researchers find that deleted local AI chats may remain recoverable from a phone\u2019s memory through a new tool called ORISA. ORISA recovered 26 of 100 project facts from a deleted Android AI session\u2014more than the original session could still access. This shows that information an assistant appears to have forgotten may remain forensically recoverable.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Researchers find that deleted local AI chats may remain recoverable from a phone\u2019s memory through a new tool called ORISA."}],"uid":"36253","created_gmt":"2026-10-13 12:45:52","changed_gmt":"2026-10-13 12:51:29","author":"John Popham","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2026-10-13T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2026-10-13T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"681416":{"id":"681416","type":"image","title":"Cyfi-Lab-Brendan-and-Student.jpg","body":null,"created":"1791895736","gmt_created":"2026-10-13 12:48:56","changed":"1791895736","gmt_changed":"2026-10-13 12:48:56","alt":"A man points to a rack of CPUs. He is talking to a student who is slighlty out of focus. ","file":{"fid":"265819","name":"Cyfi-Lab-Brendan-and-Student.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/10\/13\/Cyfi-Lab-Brendan-and-Student.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/10\/13\/Cyfi-Lab-Brendan-and-Student.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":362068,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2026\/10\/13\/Cyfi-Lab-Brendan-and-Student.jpg?itok=zg3onBN9"}}},"media_ids":["681416"],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"},{"id":"660406","name":"School of Cybersecurity \u0026 Privacy"},{"id":"660367","name":"School of Cybersecurity and Privacy"}],"categories":[{"id":"194606","name":"Artificial Intelligence"},{"id":"153","name":"Computer Science\/Information Technology and Security"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"},{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"},{"id":"8862","name":"Student Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"187915","name":"go-researchnews"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"193655","name":"Artificial Intelligence at Georgia Tech"},{"id":"145171","name":"Cybersecurity"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJohn Popham\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECommunications Officer for the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jpopham3@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}