CHAI app founder confirms old message history is coming back after user backlash [Updated]

Update 30/04/26 – 09:02 am (IST): Following the massive backlash, CHAI’s founder, Will Beauchamp, announced a course correction on Reddit, confirming that the team has found a way to extend chat histories after reviewing their cloud storage costs. In the comments, Beauchamp stated that rolling out this fix is their “top priority” and should be available to everyone within the next few days.

Additionally, Beauchamp also shared more details on the platform’s monetization strategy. When asked by a user about the status of unlimited messages, he revealed that CHAI is currently developing a “basic tier + message limit system.” This new structure is expected to be released in a couple of weeks.

Original article published on April 24, 2026, follows:

CHAI’s founder, Will Beauchamp, confirmed on Reddit that the app has rolled out an experimental feature that limits what users can see in their message history to only the past 14 days.

Everything older than that is now hidden. For a lot of users, that means months or even years of carefully built roleplay storylines are simply gone from view.

To no one’s surprise, everyone hates the change. The megathread Beauchamp opened to collect feedback quickly filled with comments from users demanding the old system back.

Several said they were canceling Ultra subscriptions, which run around $30 a month. One user described losing a year-long ongoing story they had been building in pieces. Another said they had been working toward a storyline with a vampire narrative and had just been getting to the good part. 

The worst part of this is that there was no advance notice. No in-app alert, no email, nothing. Users logged in and found their old chats gone with no explanation until they went looking on Reddit. As one commenter put it, “at least let us know beforehand so we can save our chats.”

The rationale from the company side seems to be cost. CHAI has been dealing with rising GPU expenses for a while now, and we reported earlier this year how the founder cited compute bills when the app blocked free access in India, Pakistan, Egypt, and 20-plus other countries. A 14-day message history cap presumably reduces storage load.

This is not the first time CHAI has frustrated its user base with changes that felt abrupt. Just last month, we covered reports of a message limit pop-up hitting users mid-conversation. Before that, a token limit issue was freezing chats without warning. There is also an earlier report where CHAI admitted the free tier had become quietly restricted despite an “Unlimited” label.

At the moment, Beauchamp has not confirmed whether the change will be rolled back or made permanent. He is still gathering feedback via the megathread. Given how one-sided the responses are, it is starting to look like this experiment will be short-lived.

It remains to be seen if the deleted chats will be restored for those who are part of this experiment in case the company decides against a wider release.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this in the comments below.

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