Microsoft is retiring a batch of Copilot features from 18 August 2026, and one of them takes your existing content with it. Podcasts, Deep Research, Group Chat and Copilot Labs are all being wound down as Microsoft merges its two Copilot apps — the consumer one and the Microsoft 365 one — into a single app. The dates and the details below come from Microsoft’s own support documentation, not from a press release.

Microsoft Copilot wordmark, ahead of the August 18 2026 feature retirements
Image: Microsoft, via Wikimedia Commons

If you have used any of these features, the useful window is today. Some content migrates, some of it is downloadable if you act first, and one category is simply gone.

What Copilot is retiring from August 18

Microsoft’s support pages treat each feature separately, and they do not all end the same way. The differences matter more than the headline.

  • Podcasts — retired for consumers starting 18 August 2026. Microsoft’s page is blunt: after that date, previously created podcasts will no longer be accessible, for free and paid customers alike. Shared podcast links stop working too.
  • Deep Research — retired in the consumer Copilot app starting 18 August 2026. Existing saved research content is not deleted. Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers can still reach previous Deep Research reports through chat history; Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers get Researcher in Copilot as the replacement for creating new ones.
  • Group Chat — account updates begin 18 August 2026 and roll out gradually, so the timing varies by account. Existing Group Chats are migrated as ordinary one-to-one conversations with Copilot. Your own messages, prompts and artifacts survive; prompts and artifacts created by other participants, images included, will not be accessible.
  • Copilot Labs — retired as part of your Copilot update, with no fixed date; Microsoft says timing varies by account. Labs and its experiments will no longer be available in their current form. Microsoft does name successors: early-access and preview experiences are expected through programmes such as Frontier in Copilot and experimentation environments like MAI Playground, though it warns availability and features may differ.
  • Mico — not retired exactly, but moving. The animated character disappears from Copilot Voice and continues in Learn Live. Voice itself stays. Microsoft gives no single date for this one: the change starts in August and rolls out in waves, so you may see it at a different time from someone else. Mico-specific settings such as saved colours and looks do not carry over.

Microsoft’s stated reason for dropping Group Chat, from its retiring-features FAQ, is short: “We are evolving the Copilot experience to focus on streamlined, high-quality interactions. Learnings from Group Chat are being incorporated into broader Copilot improvements.”

What to save before your account updates

Three concrete actions, in order of how much you stand to lose.

  1. Download your podcasts now. On Copilot for the web, open your podcast library and use the Download option in the podcast menu on each podcast you want to keep. Microsoft explicitly recommends doing this before the retirement date, because nothing is recoverable afterwards.
  2. Save media from Group Chats. Microsoft’s guidance is to download any media shared by other participants that you want to keep before your account updates — once the chat becomes a one-to-one conversation, other people’s images and artifacts are gone from your copy.
  3. Save anything you made in Copilot Labs. Microsoft says no action is required unless you want to keep content created in Labs experiments — in which case save it before your Copilot experience updates.
  4. Screenshot your Mico look if you had customised it. Microsoft’s own suggestion, since saved colours and looks are not migrated.

Deep Research users have less to do urgently: reports are not being deleted, and remain reachable through chat history. What ends is the ability to create new ones outside a Microsoft 365 Premium plan.

What happens to the app itself

The retirements are part of a larger consolidation. Microsoft says you will be able to sign in to the updated Copilot app with a personal account, a work or school account, or both, with work and personal kept separate and organisational security and compliance controls still applying to the work side. Chat history and most content moves with you. Files shared and generated with the standalone Copilot app are being moved to OneDrive, where you can manage them from the OneDrive app or by signing in to your Microsoft account — with the predictable footnote that more storage comes with a Microsoft 365 subscription.

Timing is uneven. Only Podcasts and Deep Research carry the hard 18 August date; Group Chat account updates merely begin then and roll out gradually, and Microsoft gives no date at all for Copilot Labs or the Mico change, saying only that timing varies by account. That unevenness is a trap for the one deadline that is fixed: waiting to see the new app before you export your podcasts is the wrong order of operations.

Worth saying plainly

Simplifying two confusingly similar Copilot apps into one is genuinely reasonable, and nobody will mourn the two-app naming mess. But the cost is not evenly shared. Podcasts you generated are deleted outright rather than archived, which is the harshest possible handling of user-created content and sits oddly beside the reassurance elsewhere in the same documentation that your chats and content come with you. Deep Research does not disappear so much as move upmarket — the capability continues as Researcher, for Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers. And where Microsoft names successors for Labs, it does so with the caveat that availability and features may differ, which is not the same as a migration path.

The pattern is familiar from other AI products this year: features arrive fast, get adopted, and are withdrawn on a few days’ visible notice, with the export burden placed on the user. We wrote much the same thing when OpenAI shut down the ChatGPT Atlas browser in August. The practical lesson is unchanged: if an AI assistant is generating things you would be annoyed to lose, keep your own copy locally, not in the assistant.

Sources: Microsoft Support — retiring Copilot features FAQ, Microsoft Support — updates to the Copilot app, Microsoft Support — Podcasts in Copilot, Microsoft Support — Deep Research in Copilot