AI Is Not an Archive: The Day My Copilot Conversations Disappeared

byJDGresham

808 followers

2 days ago

and

The Gut Punch

Hey, WA Family. I learned a hard lesson today, and I want to share it so you do not have to learn it the same way I did.

I use AI daily for brainstorming, collaboration, and research. Like many of you, I rely on it as a thinking partner while working through ideas.

Earlier today, every conversation I had been having with Microsoft Copilot was gone. No warning. No recovery option. Just gone.

Owning the Mistake

After stepping back, I realized something important.

Microsoft Copilot exists in multiple forms: inside Windows 11, as a standalone app, and as part of Microsoft 365. The version I had been using inside Windows 11 does not reliably store conversation history.

I had fallen into the habit of simply closing the Copilot window instead of logging out. In practice, that treated my usage as one long session. I assumed those conversations would still be there the next time I opened it.

That assumption was the mistake.

Microsoft did not delete files. There were never any files. I was treating a live AI workspace like an archive, and it was never designed to function that way.

The Bigger Problem Most of Us Don’t See

AI conversations feel like documents.

They scroll. They persist. You can come back to them. They look and behave like saved work.

But they are not files.
They are sessions.

An AI chat window is not an archive, a notebook, or a vault. It is a temporary workspace layered on top of systems you do not control. Those systems can change, reset, or be cleared without notice, exactly like what happened to me.

This is where many of us, especially those of us using AI daily, make a quiet but costly mistake.

We start treating AI as a place where work lives, instead of a place where work happens.

Brainstorming, outlining, research threads, strategic thinking, story development, and even business planning. All of it feels safe when it remains visible in an AI interface. But visibility is not durability.

If something exists only inside an AI conversation, you do not own it.
You are borrowing access to it.

That does not make AI bad. It makes it powerful, but temporary.

The problem is not using AI deeply. The problem is assuming it remembers for us the way a hard drive does. It does not.

AI is a collaborator.
AI is not an archive.

Once that distinction is clear, everything else falls into place.

The Rule of Thumb I’m Taking Forward

Here is the simple rule I am using from now on, and I recommend you consider something similar.

If something matters, it does not live only inside an AI.

AI conversations feel like documents. They scroll like documents. They read like documents. But they are not documents. They are sessions layered on top of systems we do not control.

From now on, my approach is this:

• AI is where ideas are explored.
• My hard drive is where ideas are stored.
• Anything I would be upset to lose gets copied out.

That is it. No complicated system. No extra software. Just a clear separation of roles.

AI helps me think.
I am responsible for preservation.

Once you internalize that distinction, this kind of loss stops being catastrophic and becomes impossible.

AI Is Still Powerful, When Used Correctly

I want to be clear about one thing.

This experience did not make me anti-AI. Quite the opposite.

AI is still one of the most powerful tools we have ever had for brainstorming, collaboration, research, and problem-solving. I use it daily and will continue to do so.

The lesson here is not “don’t use AI.”

The lesson is “don’t confuse a tool with an archive.”

When you treat AI as a collaborator and your own storage as the source of truth, the combination is incredibly effective. You get speed, creativity, and insight without risking the loss of your work.

If sharing this experience saves even one person from losing important ideas, then the lesson was worth passing on.

Learn from my SNAFU so you do not have to experience your own.

JD