Fresh from Meta Connect 2025 , the company now gives its nod to show ads to users based on their chats with the company’s AI assistant and products that are powered by generative artificial intelligence. This new recommendation system will go into effect on December 16th. This time, users will receive notifications about this new change starting on October 7th. This recommendations update will first debut with users in the UK and the EU.
Meta will show ads on Facebook and Instagram based on your AI chats
The tech giant currently offers generative AI abilities to users via its Meta AI digital assistant. This is present across Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram , and Messenger platforms. Meta AI is also available separately as a standalone app and website for consumers. Much like any AI chatbot, you can interact with it, generate images with prompts, and do much more.
Meta AI has over 1 billion monthly active users. However, this is not specific to the Meta AI standalone app. This means it’s counting the user count from across its core apps .
The recommendation system will go into effect on December 16th
Christy Harris, Meta’s privacy and data policy manager, during a media briefing, said that people already assume that Meta was incorporating generative AI interactions with ad targeting and content recommendations. “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 said.
The Meta executive explains how the update may influence the kinds of content and ads users may see. For instance, if a user chats with Meta AI about planning their family vacations, the digital assistant’s response could influence the kinds of Reels short videos they see. “ It could include ads for hotels or other signals that would be informed by the conversation that I have had with Meta AI ,” said Harris.
Voice interactions will also influence the recommendation engine
Voice interactions with Meta AI digital assistant when wearing the company’s Ray-Ban Meta glasses will also influence the recommendation engine. This recommendations update will not consider the user interactions with Meta AI via WhatsApp. This is unless users link their account on the messaging service to other apps like Instagram,
People cannot opt out of the upcoming recommendations engine change. However, if you don’t interact with Meta AI, the update won’t apply to you.
