- Meta will begin using conversations with its Meta AI assistant on Facebook and Instagram to personalize ads and content
- There is no opt-out
- Conversations in WhatsApp won’t be used for ads for now
Talking to the Meta AI chatbot on Facebook or Instagram will start influencing the kind of ads and other content you see in a few months. The tech giant announced that the plan to use your interactions with the AI assistant to adjust what you see will begin on December 16. And you won’t be able to opt out. Meta will start notifying users of the update this month.
“Whether it’s a voice chat or a text exchange with our AI features, this update will help us improve the recommendations we provide for people across our platforms so they’re more likely to see content they’re actually interested in — and less of the content they’re not,” Meta explained in its announcement. “For example, if you chat with Meta AI about hiking, we may learn that you’re interested in hiking – just as we would if you posted a reel about hiking or liked a hiking-related Page. As a result, you might start seeing recommendations for hiking groups, posts from friends about trails, or ads for hiking boots.”
Meta clearly wants people to think of its use of AI data as the same as its use of information you post publicly. But behind the usual pitch about relevance lies a sharper edge: this is about using AI chats as another rich vein of behavioral data, putting assistant conversations on par with likes, shares, and clicks in shaping your digital experience, and in monetizing it. And the only way to not have Meta AI use your data is to avoid interacting with the chatbot.
The company says it will respect boundaries around sensitive categories like politics, religion, sexuality, and health, but the definitions of sensitive are hardly universal, and misclassification seems inevitable.
On the other hand, it’s probable that only a few users are still under the illusion that their online experience is purely organic. But treating AI chat the same as post engagement or ad clicks is new. A chatbot is not a post. And as AI assistants become more natural and conversational, it blurs the mental line between talking to a tool and feeding a data collector. The illusion of intimacy may actually increase people’s willingness to share, even as the assistant quietly takes notes for the ad engine.
Meta is a pioneer in this project, but Google has been talking about and experimenting with AI ads in Gemini and from its AI Overviews, and Amazon is using conversations with its Rufus AI chatbot for similar purposes.
There’s a geographic exception to Meta AI’s new role, though. The rollout skips over Europe and the UK for now, thanks to data privacy laws like the EU’s GDPR. Those regulations slow changes in the use of personal data. Meta is working to make it happen there, but it may take some time.
Whether this is a good move for Meta might depend on whether people agree that asking a chatbot for advice about your kitchen remodel should mean seeing related content later that day or that liking a recipe post is the same as asking for a recipe. Meta is betting that most people will accept the convenience and won’t object to the behind-the-scenes mechanics. But, if you don’t want Meta AI to decide the kind of ads you see, you’ll want to ask elsewhere for ideas about your next purchase.
