MT.1176 - Retention policy is configured for the Microsoft Copilot location

Overview

Ensure a Microsoft Purview retention policy is configured for the Microsoft Copilot location to govern how Microsoft 365 Copilot prompts and AI-generated responses are retained or deleted.

Copilot interactions (the user prompt + the AI response) are stored in the user's Exchange mailbox in a hidden folder and are subject to Purview retention. Without a retention policy targeting the Microsoft Copilot location:

• Copilot transcripts may be retained indefinitely, increasing data subject access request and breach blast-radius.
• The organisation may not satisfy regulatory obligations that require defensible AI interaction retention or disposal (EU AI Act record-keeping, sector-specific regulations).
• eDiscovery and legal-hold workflows may have inconsistent coverage of AI activity.

Microsoft Purview now exposes Copilot retention through two surfaces:

• Legacy retention (Get-RetentionCompliancePolicy) — historically used for the Teams chats and Copilot interactions location.
• App retention (Get-AppRetentionCompliancePolicy) — the current surface for Microsoft Copilot experiences (Microsoft 365 Copilot, Security Copilot, Copilot Studio, Copilot in Fabric) and Enterprise AI apps, with application identifiers such as User:M365Copilot.

The test passes when at least one enabled Microsoft Purview retention policy targets Microsoft Copilot interactions on either surface.

Remediation action:

1. Open the Microsoft Purview portal — Data Lifecycle Management — Policies.

2. Click + New retention policy.

3. Choose the locations and enable Microsoft Copilot (under the AI category).

4. Define a retention duration (for example, retain for 1 year then delete) aligned to your regulatory and records-retention strategy.

5. Apply to all users or scoped pilot groups, and turn the policy on.

6. Verify with PowerShell, checking both surfaces:

   Connect-IPPSSession
   Get-RetentionCompliancePolicy | Where-Object { $_.MicrosoftCopilotLocation -or $_.Workload -match 'Copilot' }
   Get-AppRetentionCompliancePolicy | Where-Object { $_.Workload -match 'Copilot' -or ($_.Applications | Out-String) -match 'Copilot' -or ($_.Locations | Out-String) -match 'Copilot' }

Related links

• Microsoft Learn — Retention policies for Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Microsoft Learn — Learn about retention
• Microsoft Learn — Audit and eDiscovery for Microsoft 365 Copilot

Test Metadata

Field	Value
Test ID	MT.1176
Severity	Medium
Suite	Maester
Category	Purview
PowerShell test	Test-MtPurviewAiRetentionPolicy
Tags	Maester, MT.1176, Purview

Source

• Pester test: tests/Maester/Purview/Test-MtPurviewAi.Tests.ps1
• PowerShell source: powershell/public/maester/purview/Test-MtPurviewAiRetentionPolicy.ps1