Meta will use conversations with its AI chatbot to personalise ads and content from December 16, 2025, with users unable to opt out of the policy, marking a new frontier in digital privacy.
The change means that users who ask Meta’s AI chatbot for nearby hiking recommendations may start seeing ads on Instagram and Facebook for hiking boots or other gear, as well as hiking-related content from creators in their feeds, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Conversations involving religious or political views, sexual orientation, health, and racial or ethnic origin will be automatically excluded from ad customisation. Chats conducted before 16 December will not be used for personalisation, and the policy will not initially apply to users in the UK, South Korea, and the European Union.
Meta will begin notifying users about the update on October 7, 2025, via in-product notifications and emails, several weeks before it takes effect. More than 1 billion people use Meta AI every month.
Christy Harris, a privacy-policy manager at Meta, said the company plans to use the conversations as one signal in targeting ads shown to users. The company is still building out the first ads product that will use the data.
Mark Zuckerberg spent recent weeks on a hiring spree, offering recruits hundreds of millions of dollars to join him in building what he has dubbed superintelligence. He stated at a White House dinner in September that his company plans to invest $600 billion in building out AI infrastructure over the next few years.
Meta is currently funding its AI expansion with an advertising business that generated more than $47 billion in revenue during the second quarter. Other competitors have started exploring ways to monetise AI endeavours, with OpenAI announcing a partnership with Etsy and Shopify on Monday that allows ChatGPT users to buy products directly in the chat.
