It appears they still have separate inventories.
Years ago, I recall non-pet NPCs returning items handed to them - possibly in an attempt to prevent moving no drops/money, etc. This caused an unintentional widespread exploit and was then changed. After the fix, NPC's would eat the items and they still wouldn't appear on the corpse - charmed or not. I believe this was due to them putting the items in their second, inaccessible inventory.
It may be worth mentioning here and possibly a reason inventories are separated, at least on blue. Seems like an intentional change.
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