Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp will use AI chats to target ads

October 2, 2025 11:00

Meta's Dan Neary addresses a crowd in Sydney, April 2025 (Mumbrella)

People who use Meta’s AI tools — whether on Facebook, Instagram, or Whatsapp — will soon find their AI interactions influence the ads they are served.

The move, announced by Meta overnight, may feed into many users’ existing impressions the tech giant uses surveillance techniques to target its ads.

Meta said over 1 billion people already use Meta AI each month. These users will begin receiving notifications and emails next week to let them know about the move. Meta said that interactions with Meta AI won’t start influencing the posts, reels, recommendations and ads they see until 16 December.

Meta framed the latest development as a logical next step, given users’ movements and interactions with content within its apps already influence the content they see.

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Vivienne Kelly

Vivienne Kelly is a freelance journalist and commentator. She currently co-hosts MediaLand on ABC Radio National with Tim Burrowes, and was previously editor of Mumbrella between 2016 and 2020.

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1 COMMENTS

Anonymous 2 Oct 25

I understood WhatsApp messages to be end-to-end encrypted but the metadata is shared with Meta. The ugly AI ring looms large in WhatsApp and seemingly no way to switch it off. So what exactly does “using Meta AI” mean?

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