Meta, having committed hundreds of billions to AI infrastructure and talent, says it will start using people's conversations and interactions with its AI services to create personalized content and advertising.
This applies to Meta AI, the company's web-based chat interface, and apps that integrate Meta AI, such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
Meta intends to begin using people's text exchanges and voice conversations with its AI service to generate personalized posts, reels, and other attention lures starting on December 16, 2025.
"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," the company explained in its announcement. "As a result, you might start seeing recommendations for hiking groups, posts from friends about trails, or ads for hiking boots."
A notification campaign about the change begins October 7, 2025.
There's no opt-out, but Meta has spared those who live in the EU, the UK, and South Korea for the time being.
The social networking giant and metaverse money-burner will let users make some adjustments to its slop-gavage loop with its Ads Preferences and feed customization controls.
Meta insists it won't personalize ads based on conversations that touch on religion, sexual orientation, politics, health, race, ethnicity, philosophical belief, or trade union membership.
That list of untouchable topics suggests canny Meta users could stymie the personalization plan by prefixing every interaction with a suitably sensitive term – for example, start every interaction with "Pray tell..." or “Oh, Lord, Meta really thought this was a good idea?”
Known as Facebook until brand damage from incessant privacy scandals inspired a name change in 2021, Meta was notionally focused on the metaverse – an ill-defined term for immersive digital experiences that may or may not involve goggles. Having spent something like $60 billion on its Reality Labs group without much to show for it (apart from the privacy-invading Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses), Meta lately has taken to talking up AI.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month told President Trump that Meta plans to invest $600 billion on AI investment through 2028 – and surely that will happen because Zuckerberg said it, even if other massive AI spending projects like Stargate’s promised $500 billion AI infrastructure investments don’t quite add up.
Meta's interest in AI, however, is really about ads – using AI to encourage exposure to and engagement with ads, some of which may be generated by AI. The company has already said AI has helped boost engagement with ads posted to its platforms. Execs also see AI as making it easier to advertisers to create and manage campaigns.
As noted by the UK's Open Rights Group, 98 percent of Meta’s $165 billion of revenue in 2024 came from advertising, resulting in net income of $62.4 billion.
Iesha White, director of intelligence for marketing watchdog Check My Ads, told The Register in an email that several AI companies like Perplexity and OpenAI have integrated advertising into their AI products.
"But this is different – Meta’s core business is monetizing ad space across its owned and operated sites and apps, in addition to ad placements on external publisher partnerships via its Facebook Audience Network product," said White. "By harvesting data from its AI chats across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, Meta gains yet another closed-loop data source, meaning Meta could reduce transparency of the targeting inputs across its advertising products, in the name of privacy.
"It also provides an opportunity for Meta to further shape and obfuscate its attribution models using its own source of truth, with brands unable to independently audit a campaign’s true effectiveness."
Meta coincidentally is fighting a $7 billion class action lawsuit [PDF] brought by advertisers who claim that Meta fraudulently represented the potential reach of its ads by citing user accounts rather than actual people – a charge Meta disputes. ®