Forum Discussion
Copilot Chat Retention vs Memory: What Happens to Chat History Inferences?
How do Chat History inferences behave after tenant retention deletes the underlying Copilot interactions?
Microsoft's documentation explains that:
- Saved Memories persist until explicitly deleted.
- Chat History personalization creates inferred details.
- Purview retention policies do not apply to Copilot Memory.
What is unclear is the lifecycle of Chat History inferences when the Copilot interactions that originally contributed to those inferences are permanently removed by a tenant retention policy.
Example:
- A tenant has a 60-day retention policy for Microsoft 365 Copilot interactions.
- Copilot infers user preferences from conversations.
- The source conversations are later removed due to retention.
Does Copilot:
- Retain those inferred details?
- Recompute them from remaining conversations?
- Remove them because the source interactions no longer exist?
Understanding this is important because users may experience changes in Copilot personalization without understanding why.
1 Reply
Hello,
For your specific questions :
Does Copilot retain those inferred details ?
Possibly but... Microsoft states that Purview retention policies do not apply to Copilot Memory and explicitly notes that deleting Copilot interactions through retention does not automatically delete user memories. Therefore, there is no Microsoft documentation indicating that those inferred details are removed when the source interactions expire.
Does Copilot recompute them from remaining conversations ?
Microsoft describes Chat History details as dynamic and states that Copilot may update or discard older details over time. However, it does not explain whether those details are recalculated from the remaining conversations after retention deletes older interactions.
Does Copilot remove them because the source interactions no longer exist ?
This behavior is when a user deletes all chats containing a specific piece of information. In that case, the related Chat History details are removed within seven days. Microsoft does not state that retention-based deletion triggers the same behavior.
Unless I missed a more recent publication, this specific retention-versus-inference scenario does not appear to be publicly documented by Microsoft today...
