Is there a way to get items back from Animate Guardian?

I think I've seen older videos of people dropping a replacement item for their AG and it dropping the previous item in return for equipping the new one. That doesn't seem to be working anymore, is there any way to reclaim items? Feels kinda bad that my items are just slurped up by it forever and if I ever want to upgrade them then I just have to eat the cost of losing the old item.