6 Limitations of ChatGPT that lead users to misunderstand the power of AI.

For many, ChatGPT is like a "multitasking assistant" that can handle countless requests in a short amount of time, from writing emails and drafting reports to creating business plans, generating images, designing concepts, or assisting with in-depth research. When used correctly, this chatbot can help improve productivity and deliver an optimal work experience that was previously difficult to achieve.

However, despite OpenAI's continuous updates to versions like GPT-4, GPT-4.1, GPT-5, and features supporting image processing, voice, programming, and real-time search, ChatGPT still faces numerous systemic limitations. Some limitations stem from technical issues, while others relate to security, ethics, or data constraints. It's crucial for users to understand these limitations to utilize ChatGPT more effectively and avoid exceeding the technology's current capabilities. This article provides a detailed analysis of six key limitations that ChatGPT still cannot overcome, despite its advanced state. These points will help you gain a more comprehensive understanding of how AI operates, what AI can offer, and what still requires human intervention.

1. Limitations in the ability to remember information.

One of the most common user expectations is that ChatGPT can retain long-term information related to preferences, work styles, or data from previous conversations. This is because if an AI assistant can gain a deep understanding of the user's personality over time, the interaction experience will become seamless, convenient, and truly personalized.

However, ChatGPT's memory capabilities are quite limited. Although OpenAI has introduced a Memory feature, allowing chatbots to store certain information if requested by the user or if the system deems the data important, this memory capacity is limited and not designed to store everything. ChatGPT only saves fundamental details such as the tone of voice the user wants the AI ​​to use, the areas of expertise the user is interested in, or frequently repeated preferences in conversations.

In practice, this leads to several situations that cause inconvenience for users. For example, if you are working on a project that lasts for many days, ChatGPT may not remember the details exchanged in the previous chat session. You will have to provide the context or main content again each time you open a new window. Even if you add information to memory, it is still stored in "shared memory," meaning it is not tied to a specific project. If you have many different projects at the same time, ChatGPT may misinterpret the information or apply it in the wrong context.

OpenAI has previously stated that they don't want ChatGPT to remember everything about users for security and privacy reasons. Storing too much personal data can create risks, as the system must ensure users have control over their information and can request to forget it at any time. Therefore, short-term memory and limited storage mechanisms are entirely intentional, even though this sometimes means ChatGPT doesn't "remember" as long as we'd like.

As a result, users need to provide clear context whenever exchanging complex work information, rather than expecting the AI ​​to automatically understand the entire project history. While this isn't a major drawback, it still represents a barrier when comparing ChatGPT to a long-term, human-like work assistant. Therefore, memorization remains one of the areas where ChatGPT cannot fully achieve its potential.

2. It cannot yet interact directly with the device like a traditional virtual assistant.

In an era where virtual assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa can control devices with voice commands, many people expect ChatGPT to possess similar capabilities. This expectation is further heightened by Apple's introduction of Apple Intelligence, an AI system that integrates ChatGPT into Siri to expand its language processing, search, and content creation capabilities.

However, even when "cooperating" with Siri, ChatGPT still cannot directly control iPhones, Macs, or other devices. ChatGPT cannot command Wi-Fi to turn on/off, send messages, open applications, adjust volume, or access the device's file system. In other words, ChatGPT's role remains that of a language processing brain, not a system controller.

The reason for this limitation is related to security issues. Allowing an AI model to access and control a device at the system level could lead to serious risks. The AI ​​could inadvertently perform harmful actions or be exploited to manipulate the device. Therefore, tech companies choose to clearly divide roles: Siri (or the device assistant) has the right to control the system, while ChatGPT only plays a supporting role in processing information, creating content, and responding.

Meanwhile, some other AI models, such as Anthropic's Claude, have experimented with controlling computers using simulated mouse and keyboard input. This has sparked debate about the line between intelligent automation and security risks. OpenAI maintains a more cautious approach, so ChatGPT doesn't have this capability yet, at least not at the moment.

In the future, ChatGPT may be able to expand its device access through a "sandbox" mechanism or a secure virtual environment. However, at the present stage, ChatGPT is not yet ready to act as a device control assistant.

3. Having difficulty creating images from negative prompts.

Although ChatGPT's image creation capabilities (via DALL·E) have improved significantly, a notable limitation remains: this chatbot often struggles to handle negative prompts or "do not do" requests.

A classic case is when a user requests: "Draw Santa Claus with a mustache but no beard." While this request is simple for a human, AI often draws Santa Claus with a full beard. If the user switches to a more positive description such as "Santa Claus with a mustache and a clean-shaven chin," the result is still not as desired.

The problem stems from how AI generates images. Image-generating models don't analyze commands with rigorous logic; instead, they operate by predicting patterns from the data. In the training dataset, almost all images of Santa Claus have thick, white beards covering them completely. When the user requests the removal of this important feature, the model cannot process it effectively because it conflicts with the familiar pattern. "Removing a default attribute" is much more difficult than "adding a new attribute."

One workaround that many users have experimented with is to ask ChatGPT to draw a different character dressed as Santa Claus, for example, "draw Hercules Poirot in a Santa costume." The image will typically have the characteristic mustache but won't truly resemble Santa Claus. This demonstrates that creating images with negative requirements remains a difficult task for current AI models.

Although this capability may improve over time as data and models expand, ChatGPT is currently unable to fully address requests of the type "none," "remove," "do not draw," or "do not use feature X."

4. Taking the first steps towards becoming a personal assistant, but with very limited experience.

OpenAI has previously revealed its long-term goal of building an AI agent system capable of making its own decisions, performing tasks, and acting as a true personal assistant. Beyond simply responding to commands, the AI ​​agent could track tasks over time, handle complex tasks, and act without constant prompting.

ChatGPT has begun to enter this field through its Tasks feature. Users can assign chatbots to perform certain scheduled tasks without opening the app, such as sending email reminders or compiling periodic information. However, the maximum number of tasks is limited to ten. This number is too small for users who want to automate many personal or work processes.

ChatGPT's planning capabilities are still at a basic level. It can suggest steps to take, but it's still far from being able to implement the entire process from start to finish. Furthermore, because it cannot directly access the device, ChatGPT is limited in what it can actually "do".

Therefore, although many people view ChatGPT as an intelligent personal assistant, the reality is that it still lacks many elements to fully fulfill this role. Representative AI is the future trend, but ChatGPT is currently only in its early stages.

5. Limitations on access to information beyond training data.

Although ChatGPT can search for information online, depending on the version you use, not all data can be accessed or analyzed. This stems from two main reasons.

Firstly, ChatGPT is trained on time-constrained data. This means that events occurring after the data fixation time will not appear in the model's internal knowledge. ChatGPT can compensate for this with web search functionality, but search only handles a small fraction of information sources.

Secondly, many websites, magazines, online newspapers, or online services require payment. ChatGPT does not have access to this content without permission or outside the scope of data provided by the partner. Therefore, when you request ChatGPT to summarize content from a paid publication, it may refuse or provide incomplete information.

Furthermore, ChatGPT cannot access your personal documents on your device, such as PDF files, emails, photos, or data on applications, unless you upload them or grant access through the API. This helps protect your privacy but also limits the chatbot's support capabilities.

Therefore, although ChatGPT possesses a huge data repository and fairly strong web access capabilities, its scope of knowledge cannot completely replace search engines or specialized information repositories.

6. Users should exercise caution when receiving information from ChatGPT.

Despite continuous improvements in new versions, ChatGPT can still generate misleading, inaccurate, or completely fabricated information, but presented in a very convincing way. This phenomenon is known as "hallucination": the illusion created by AI.

This can happen in many different situations. When a user asks ChatGPT to search for an article from a specific website, the chatbot will sometimes provide a non-existent title or create a fake link. When asked to cite a research paper, it might automatically generate a seemingly authentic document that doesn't exist. When needing to analyze data, AI can produce unsubstantiated figures.

The problem lies in how the AI ​​model generates answers based on the probability of the next word, rather than on the validity of the data. Therefore, if an answer “seems plausible,” the model will confidently generate that content even if the information is completely wrong.

This is not only inconvenient but in some cases can be harmful, especially when users rely on ChatGPT to make financial, medical, legal, or academic decisions. Therefore, while ChatGPT is very useful, users should always verify information with other reliable sources.

ChatGPT is a powerful AI tool with significant potential to support work and life. However, like any other technology, it still has unavoidable limitations. Limitations in memory capacity, inability to control the device, difficulty in processing negative images, limited automation capabilities, limited data access, and the risk of creating misinformation are typical examples.