The right answer depends on which Copilot you use. Work or school Copilot is not governed by the same controls as the older consumer app. Microsoft also introduced an updated personal Copilot app on August 18, 2026, and now marks the older training-toggle instructions as applying only to the old experience.
Do not use chat deletion as a substitute for a training opt-out. Deleting history, disabling memory and controlling model training are different actions. There is no verified tenant-wide “Allow Microsoft to use your data to improve AI models” switch at the admin-center path previously described here.
Official documentation checked: October 14, 2026.
Identify the Copilot Experience First
- Work or school account: Microsoft states that organizational Copilot prompts, responses and Microsoft Graph data are not used to train foundation language models. This is a service commitment, not a protection you must activate through a consumer opt-out.
- Copilot inside Microsoft 365 apps for home: Microsoft separately states that prompts, responses and file contents are not used to train foundation models. See the home-app privacy guidance.
- Older personal Copilot app: the documented training controls below apply.
- Updated personal Copilot app: use the current privacy guidance, not screenshots from the older app.
Check the account displayed inside Copilot itself. Being signed into Windows with a work account does not, by itself, prove which account a browser tab or app is using.
Turn Off Training in the Older Personal App
These steps come from Microsoft’s older-app privacy-controls article. Use them only if they match that older experience:
- Sign in to the personal account whose preferences you want to change.
- On the older web experience, select your profile icon and profile name, then Privacy. On Windows or macOS, use the profile icon, then Settings → Privacy. On mobile, open the menu, select the profile icon, then Account → Privacy.
- Turn off Training on conversation activity and, separately, Training on voice conversations where offered.
- Reopen the settings and check that each intended control remains off.
Microsoft describes the opt-out as excluding future conversation activity from model training. It is not a promise to undo completed training or to stop all processing needed for security, legal obligations or service operation.
If you have the updated personal app
Microsoft’s current personal-app privacy overview and current privacy controls apply to the updated experience. They do not document the old pair of training switches as a replacement procedure. We therefore cannot promise that those switches exist in the new app, or infer a training policy merely from their absence.
Follow the privacy links in your installed experience and ask Microsoft Support to confirm the applicable policy if training use is a deciding factor for you. Until that is clear, do not submit sensitive material on the assumption that an older screenshot establishes your current protection.
Keep Training, Memory and History Separate
In the updated personal app, saved memories are managed under Settings → Personalization. Turning off saved memories does not automatically erase existing memories; Microsoft documents a separate manage/delete action. This controls memory, not an inferred model-training setting.
For organizational Copilot, interactions can be retained even though they are not used to train foundation models. Administrators can apply retention policies, and deletion by a user does not establish that all compliance copies have disappeared. See Microsoft’s organizational data and privacy documentation.
If your requirement is “do not retain this information,” ask about retention explicitly. If it is “do not use this to train a model,” ask that separately. An answer about one does not resolve the other.
How to Check Your Choice Without Sharing Sensitive Data
Record the product, account type, date and exact setting label you changed. Use a harmless test conversation if you need to check history behavior. Do not use a confidential document as a privacy test, and do not ask the chatbot itself to certify Microsoft’s retention or training policy.
For work material, follow your organization’s approved Copilot route and data-sharing rules. For a personal account, rely on the policy linked from the actual app version. If a setting is missing, capture the relevant settings screen without account details and request clarification; clearing browser cookies or deleting chats is not a verified replacement.