Your chats with Meta’s AI could soon shape the ads you see – The American Bazaar
Meta said on Wednesday that user conversations with its AI chatbot will soon be used for personalized ads. Users will start seeing changes next week, but the changes won’t kick in till Dec.16.
Meta already targets users with ads based on what they post and click on, as well as who they are connected to on its social media platform. With this new update, the company will get to know what users are shopping for, or what trip they’re planning, based on their conversations with the chatbot.
“Just like other personalized services, we tailor the ads and content you see based on your activity, ensuring that your experience evolves as your interests change,” Meta said in its Wednesday blog post, announcing the change. “Many people expect their interactions to make what they see more relevant. Soon, interactions with AIs will be another signal we use to improve people’s experience.”
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“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 added, as the company elaborated on the update. Users can talk to the chatbot via Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or the standalone Meta AI app.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in May that Meta AI reached one billion monthly active users, and added that eventually “there will be opportunities to either insert paid recommendations” or offer “a subscription service so that people can pay to use more compute.” Meanwhile, Meta privacy and data policy manager Christy Harris said during a media briefing that people already assumed that the Facebook parent was incorporating generative AI interactions with ad targeting and content recommendation.
“While this is a natural progression of our personalization efforts and will help give us even better recommendations for people, we want to be super transparent about it and provide a heads up before we actually begin using this data in a new way, even if people already thought that we were doing this,” Harris added.
Harris also elaborated saying the update could influence the kinds of content and ads people may see across Facebook, Instagram and other Meta-related apps.
Nileena Sunil is a Reporter for the American Bazaar. A postgraduate in English Literature from Christ University, Bengaluru, she has previously worked as an instructional designer and a copywriter before switching fields.
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