Tools AI Minute Newsroom 2026-08-14

Microsoft is merging its two Copilots — and your group chats and AI podcasts disappear on 18 August

Microsoft began rolling the consumer Copilot app and Microsoft 365 Copilot into a single app on 13 August, so people can switch between a personal and a work account without changing apps. Four things are being retired rather than carried over: Group Chats, AI-generated Podcasts, Copilot Labs and Deep Research, along with the animated character Mico. Group chats and podcasts stop working on 18 August and their contents become inaccessible, including shared links. Files created in the standalone app are moved to OneDrive, and Microsoft warns other features may vanish temporarily during the transition. Paying business users get a feature called Researcher in place of Deep Research; consumers get no replacement.

Why it mattersThere is a short window here: anything you kept in Copilot group chats or generated as a podcast is gone after 18 August, and Microsoft is not migrating it. Beyond the housekeeping, look at which features were cut. The sociable and experimental ones went, and the surviving research capability sits behind a business licence. Two years into consumer AI assistants, the company with the largest distribution of any of them is narrowing what it offers for free rather than widening it — a reasonable read of which AI features people actually pay for.

✓ Verified · 3 sources

Microsoft is merging its two Copilots — and your group chats and AI podcasts disappear on 18 August

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