Meta greenlights Facebook, Instagram ads based on your AI chats (www.cnbc.com)

Meta announced it will begin using interactions with its Meta AI digital assistant to inform content recommendations and ads across Facebook, Instagram and other Meta apps. The change—part of an update to its recommendation system—will take effect Dec. 16 with user notices starting Oct. 7. Meta says Meta AI already has more than 1 billion monthly active users, and the company confirmed that both typed and voice interactions (including from Ray-Ban Meta glasses) will be used as signals. WhatsApp conversations won’t be included unless a user links their WhatsApp account to other Meta apps, and there is no opt‑out for the recommendation change (though it won’t apply to people who don’t interact with Meta AI). This move formally ties Meta’s generative-AI products to its core ad personalization pipeline: conversational prompts and model responses become inferred-interest signals feeding the recommendation engine (e.g., asking about family vacations could surface family‑friendly Reels or travel ads). Technically, this implies cross-app signal aggregation, audio/text extraction into user profiles, and expanded training/serving workloads—part of Meta’s broader AI spending and potential monetization plans (paid recommendations or subscriptions). The update raises familiar privacy and regulatory questions (Meta plans a UK/EU rollout after regulatory updates) about transparency, consent, data governance and how model-derived inferences are used for targeted advertising.