GoKawiilGeorgia Tech tool ORISA recovers deleted local AI chat data from phone memory
Georgia Tech researchers built ORISA, a tool that scans a device's working memory for remnants of deleted AI chatbot conversations. In tests using the ChatterUI Android app loaded with 100 fictional facts that were later deleted, ORISA recovered 26 of them from memory, more than the 14 the AI assistant itself could still access.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
The findings suggest that running AI assistants locally, often chosen for privacy, may not fully erase sensitive data once a chat is deleted, since traces can persist in device memory. Lead researcher Ken Xu says this could aid cybersecurity investigators in reconstructing what information someone shared with or received from an AI, including in cases where bad actors try to erase evidence after misusing a model.
- ORISA is an experimental tool built by Georgia Tech researchers to recover deleted local AI chat data.
- In testing, it recovered 26 of 100 fictional facts from phone memory after deletion, more than the chatbot itself retained.
- The tool highlights a potential cybersecurity gap: local AI's lack of centralized logging makes deleted chats harder to trace, which ORISA aims to address.
Source: zdnet.com — Radhika Rajkumar, 2026-10-27
Published there as: “This tool can recover deleted AI chats from your phone – how it works”
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