Records Retention and AI: ARMA InfoCon 2026 Takeaways

Lee Karas and Maura Dunn close out their ARMA InfoCon 2026 coverage with a full debrief from Savannah, Georgia. AI ran through nearly every session, and so did the questions. How do you control it? What do you do with the prompts? Who decides how it gets used? This episode covers what they learned about records retention and AI, and where the profession goes next.

Made for This Moment

Many attendees saw AI as the moment information governance has prepared for. Accountability, transparency, retention, disposition, and traceability are the foundations AI needs to succeed. Without them, AI stays a shiny new toy instead of a game changer. Yet many practitioners also hit a wall. They know the principles matter, but they are not in the room where AI decisions get made.

The episode returns to a show favorite: the King of Ur, who kept contracts on clay tablets around 3000 BC. Those tablets gave both parties to a transaction a version they could trust. Every organization still needs that today. AI makes it harder, because it can create convincing content out of nothing.

Confidence Is Not Accuracy

Speaker after speaker made the same point. AI is good at confidence. Whether the answer is right is a different story. Conflicting data and early drafts trip it up, because the tool lacks the context records managers bring. That context, along with traceability and accountability, gets lost when you turn AI loose on your content.

Rethinking Retention and Disposition

The most important question of the week had no answer yet. Can retention and disposition move from tight controls to a good faith effort based on confidence levels? Data volumes have outgrown the controls that worked for paper and well-mapped shared drives. AI adds even more. If the old level of control is no longer possible, the profession should stop promising it. Instead, practitioners should weigh what they give up and document the risk. That question sits at the center of records retention and AI.

IT Secures It, Privacy Limits It, Governance Proves It

Lee and Maura offer a simple way to divide the work. IT secures the data. Privacy limits it. Information governance proves it. A strong information governance program does all three. That proof is not 100% locked down. It rests on an honest understanding of confidence levels and risk factors.

The technical track showed how much larger a role technology now plays at ARMA. Many organizations look to Microsoft Purview to govern what Copilot can see. The controls are still maturing, and the hosts are still learning the tool. Either way, file plans, sensitivity labels, and records categories matter more than ever.

Find Out Where You Stand

Start with the IG Navigator, a free eight-question assessment on the TrailBlazer Learning Academy.

Episode Chapters

00:00 Arriving at ARMA InfoCon 2026
00:43 Back to our roots and the AI theme
01:56 How do you control it? The questions in every session
03:01 Records management skills in the age of AI
03:35 Made for this moment: the principles AI depends on
04:50 Getting invited into the AI conversation
05:22 The King of Ur and records both parties can trust
06:48 AI confidence versus accuracy
08:13 Saying yes without abandoning the fundamentals
09:15 Retention and disposition: from tight control to confidence levels
11:38 IT secures it, privacy limits it, governance proves it
12:24 Microsoft Purview, Copilot, and the technical track
14:46 File plans, sensitivity labels, and records categories
15:04 A successful return to ARMA InfoCon

What Counts is produced by TrailBlazer Consulting, LLC and hosted by Lee Karas and Maura Dunn. Learn more or reach out directly at info@trailblazer.us.com. Explore compliance-ready corporate training programs at the TrailBlazer Learning Academy. Read more from Maura at Maura’s Substack. Music by Jason Blake. Full disclaimer.