Copilot group chat, podcasts and deep research reach end-of-life on 18 August 2026
Three consumer Copilot features hit hard end-of-life on 18 August 2026. Here is what is deleted, what survives, and what it costs you.
Three consumer Copilot features that Microsoft flagged for deprecation on 13 August 2026 have now reached their hard end-of-life. From 18 August 2026, Group Chat and Podcasts are gone permanently, and Deep Research moves behind a paid subscription wall. Here is a clear account of what has happened, what you lose, and what your options are.
What has been switched off
Podcasts are gone entirely. Microsoft’s official notice states: “Podcasts will no longer be available and previously created podcasts will not be accessible.” That includes any episodes you generated and any shared links you sent to others. Those links stopped working on 18 August 2026. There is no bulk export option, and Microsoft confirmed that audio files cannot be saved outside of Copilot.
If you shared podcast links with colleagues, friends or an audience, those listeners now hit a dead end. The window to download individual episodes from your podcast library closed on 18 August 2026.
Group Chat threads are also gone. Microsoft migrated each group thread into individual one-to-one conversations, which means everything the other participants contributed, including images generated inside those threads, is no longer reachable. If you had anything worth keeping in a group chat, the time to copy it was before 18 August 2026. If you did not, it is gone.
Deep Research works differently. Existing reports are not being deleted. You can still read them in your Copilot chat history, open them in Microsoft Word, and save them locally. What you can no longer do, unless you are on a qualifying subscription, is create new ones.
Deep research: what it now costs
The ability to run new Deep Research sessions has moved to Microsoft 365 Premium, which is priced at $19.99 per month. Under that tier and above, the equivalent feature is called Researcher. It does what Deep Research did, generating long, cited reports from web sources, and adds deeper integration with your Microsoft 365 data including emails, calendar entries, and files.
If you were using Deep Research as a free consumer feature and do not want to pay $19.99 a month for it, comparable capability is available at no cost through ChatGPT and Perplexity’s current free tiers. Both still offer web-sourced deep research to general consumers without a subscription.
Why this is worth noting
Microsoft announced both Deep Research and Podcasts as new features in April 2025, as part of its 50th anniversary showcase. Their retirement barely 15 months later is a reasonable indicator of how quickly the competitive pressures in consumer AI are reshaping product roadmaps. An internal memo reportedly described the cuts as features that had not “earned the right to exist.”
That framing is worth keeping in mind for anyone who builds habits or workflows around newer Copilot features. The product is in active flux.
What you should do now
If you used Podcasts: There is nothing to retrieve. Access ended on 18 August 2026.
If you had content in Group Chat: Anything not copied before 18 August 2026 is no longer accessible. For future reference, Microsoft recommends copying important AI-generated content into a document or notes app rather than leaving it in a conversation thread.
If you rely on Deep Research: Open your chat history and export any reports you want to keep. You can open them in Microsoft Word and save them locally. If you want to continue generating new reports, check whether you are on Microsoft 365 Premium or a commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. If not, ChatGPT and Perplexity are the nearest free alternatives.
If you are a commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot user: Microsoft describes the impact on commercial accounts as largely cosmetic. The Researcher feature, which replaces Deep Research for your tier, should already be available to you.
The broader context
These retirements are happening alongside Microsoft’s merger of its consumer Copilot app and the Microsoft 365 Copilot app into a single unified product, now called Microsoft Copilot, reachable at copilot.cloud.microsoft. That consolidation is a separate story, but it is the organisational backdrop against which these cuts are being made. The product team is simplifying what Copilot is and does, and features that did not demonstrate sufficient traction are coming out of scope.
The practical lesson is a familiar one in software: treat AI-generated content the same way you would treat anything stored in a free-tier cloud service. Export regularly, do not rely on shared links for long-term access, and check the product’s changelog before a feature becomes part of your workflow.