Meta is set to make its biggest leap yet in merging artificial intelligence with its core advertising business, announcing that conversations with its AI chatbot will soon be used to tailor the ads and content users see across Facebook and Instagram.
Beginning December 16, topics users discuss with the chatbot, whether typed or spoken via Meta’s headsets, will become part of the company’s data signals for content recommendations and ad targeting.
Christy Harris, Meta’s privacy policy manager, confirmed there will be no option to opt out of this change.
While Meta won’t immediately serve ads inside the chatbot itself, Harris said the company is “adding one more signal from AI interactions into the mix in the same way that we use other signals across all of our platforms,” describing it as “an incremental change.”
Importantly, only conversations after December 16 will be used for targeting.
Meta has poured tens of billions of dollars into AI, betting on the technology as a core driver of future growth. With more than 1 billion people already using Meta’s chatbot monthly, it has quickly become one of the most significant ways users interact with the company’s artificial intelligence.
For Meta, the move could help reinforce its advertising business, which remains the company’s dominant revenue stream and the financial backbone for its AI investments. By aligning conversational data with ad targeting, Meta is attempting to deepen personalisation at a time when marketers are seeking more precise ways to reach audiences.
But the advancement does raise some red flags. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously suggested AI companions could help people feel less lonely or act as a kind of therapist. Users often turn to chatbots for highly personal needs, ranging from health and financial advice to emotional support.
Whether people will feel comfortable having those conversations potentially influence their ad experience remains to be seen.
The new targeting system will launch globally but exclude the UK, European Union and South Korea at first, due to regulatory restrictions.
Meta said it hopes to extend the program into those markets after further review, though the EU has already taken a hard stance on Meta’s use of AI-powered products over privacy concerns.
