Meta is quietly preparing a major shift in its privacy policy — and it could reshape how users experience its apps. Starting December 16, 2025, the company will begin using data from your interactions with its AI products, including chatbots, to personalise the ads you see across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and beyond.
The change was announced in a newsroom post, with Meta noting that over a billion people now use its AI each month. The company says these updates will help its AI “feel more relevant” and “understand your goals” while also making ads more personalized.
That personalisation, however, comes with a catch: there is no opt-out. If you use Meta AI, the data you share can and will be used to sell ads, whether you’re asking for recipe suggestions on WhatsApp or playing with image generation on Instagram. The only way to avoid it is to stop using Meta’s AI entirely.
There are some limits. Meta says it won’t use sensitive conversations — about religion, politics, health, sexual orientation, or race — for targeting. But nearly everything else you type or generate could be fair game. And since Meta accounts are linked, chatting with AI on one platform will feed data into ads across all the company’s apps.
The update puts Meta in step with Amazon, which has already outlined plans to monetize Alexa+ with ad placements during interactions. But it also raises fresh concerns about how much users really understand about where their data goes — and how little choice they have in the matter.
For now, it means your “helpful” AI assistant isn’t just learning from you — it’s helping advertisers learn about you too.
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