Can I change the group owner in a persistent group in Wi-Fi Direct?

You can now create a new persistent group via WifiP2pManager.createGroup(..). It will create a new group and make the calling device (A) group owner and can do what you described. The only problem is once you create a group and connect to another device, that other device (B) will remember that specific group. If you try to create a new group in A (say, opening the app a second time) and try to connect from B, it will automatically join the old group and not appear as if it is connected in the new group in A.

EDIT:
There is a way to wipe out all persistent groups. It is a hidden function called deletePersistentGroups. This will wipe out every single one though, but it seems to be the only reliable way to solve your problem. Call this after you call WifiP2pManager.initialize(..), so you can use the channel.

private void deletePersistentGroups(){
    try {
        Method[] methods = WifiP2pManager.class.getMethods();
        for (int i = 0; i < methods.length; i++) {
            if (methods[i].getName().equals("deletePersistentGroup")) {
                // Delete any persistent group
                for (int netid = 0; netid < 32; netid++) {
                    methods[i].invoke(wifiP2pManager, mChannel, netid, null);
                }
            }
        }
    } catch(Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

I’m not quite sure why the netid goes up to 31, I would assume that that is the maximum number of allowed remembered connections. Code taken from here.