Meta has announced that it will soon begin using your conversations with Meta AI to build its data profile of you, in order to improve its ad targeting.
Yes, your conversations with Meta AI will soon inform the promotions you’re shown on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp.
As explained by Meta:
“More than 1 billion people use Meta AI every month. We’re continuing to improve the way our AI products feel relevant to you, understand your goals, and help you accomplish tasks more efficiently. We’re also using Meta AI, and our other AI features, to improve your experience on all of our platforms. We will soon use your interactions with AI at Meta to personalize the content and ads you see, including things like posts and reels. We’ll start notifying people about this update next week via notifications and emails, several weeks before it goes into effect on December 16, 2025.”
So, essentially, Meta’s now going to be using your chats with Meta AI as another data source to show you more relevant content in general, including ads.
Which is no surprise, really, though some people will point to this as another example of Meta’s inherent evil, because they’re a big corporation looking to profit from users in any way that they can.
I mean, yeah, it’s a business, and it offers apps that you can use for free, which means that you’re actually paying for them by providing your data, which Meta can then on-sell to advertisers via its ad products.
So, essentially, as clever people are ever so keen to point out, you are the product in this equation, which means that Meta will be looking to improve its product offering to ad partners however it can.
“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. 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 does note that any conversations that you have with Meta AI about things like religion, sexual orientation, political leanings, health, racial or ethnic origin or philosophical beliefs will not be used for ad targeting, as they qualify as sensitive issues.
But everything else will provide more insight to Meta’s systems, based on any accounts that you’ve connected in the app.
Again, it’s a fairly logical progression, which probably won’t mean a lot to most users.
Honestly, if this announcement was coming from OpenAI, based on the conversations that people are having with ChatGPT, I would anticipate a lot more anxiety, but because it's Meta AI, which isn’t used as a personal Agony Aunt in the same way, it’ll likely be less of a concern overall.
But then again, with people’s chats with Meta AI being displayed publicly, various queries could raise concerns.
Also, be careful what you’re using Meta’s image generator for, as this will also fall under this new data usage parameter. Unless you’re okay with getting relevant ads related to those prompts.
And for advertisers, this could be a valuable new data input stream, that will help you reach more relevant audiences based on their evolving interests.
And if Meta can get people searching for products, or making service-related queries via its chatbot, that could be a goldmine of additional user insights, which could supercharge its ad targeting for increasingly relevant, and specific promotions.
You can bet that Meta's already planning for this, and considering ways to prompt more product-related activity via its AI bots.
