Meta justified the move by saying that it will help the company improve ads and content recommendations.
Meta will start sending notifications to users on October 7
Photo Credit: Meta
Meta will soon start using data collected from users' interactions with its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to show ads and content. The company said that this allows it to recommend content more efficiently, and the change will be implemented in December. Users will start seeing messages from the company starting October 7, via in-product notifications and emails. Moreover, the company has detailed different ways in which users can choose to adjust the ads they are shown and the content they are recommended.
The US-based firm announced that starting December 16, it will start using people's interactions with Meta AI to personalise content and ads shown on the platform. Meta also says that it will start notifying users about this change on October 7 via “in-product notifications” and emails.
This means that Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, and other Meta-owned platforms will start suggesting content like posts and reels that a user “may find interesting”. Similarly, they will see ads that are “more relevant” to them based on the data the company collects from their voice and text-based interactions with the AI chatbot.
Meta also claims that this update will help the company improve the recommendations users are shown, so that people only watch the content they might be interested in. An example cited by the tech giant was that if a user chats with Meta AI about hiking, then Instagram and Facebook might start displaying recommendations for hiking groups, posts from their peers about trails, and ads for hiking boots.
However, Meta said that users will be “in control” of what content they are shown. According to the blog, users can use Ads Preferences and other feed control tools to adjust the content and ads they see.
The company explained that ads based on a user's interactions with Meta AI on topics like religious views, sexual orientation, political views, health, racial or ethnic origin, philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, will not be used for showing ads. However, it fell short of saying that the same is not used for recommending posts and reels.
Meta will only use the information from accounts that a user has added to the Accounts Centre. So, if a user has not added their WhatsApp account to the same, the data from Meta AI interactions on WhatsApp will not be used for recommending content or showing ads.
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