Meta plans to engage AI to collect user activity data on Facebook and Instagram: what will change

Meta is currently updating its artificial intelligence-powered assistant. The company's new guidelines will allow the assistant to "remember certain details that you share with it in 1:1 chats on WhatsApp and Messenger" and collect information about your activity on Facebook and Instagram.

According to Meta, the AI chatbot is being updated "to provide information and recommendations tailored to individuals," such as ads, pages you might like, etc. At the same time, as engadget notes, "these types of recommendations could be pretty far reaching and eerily-accurate."

The update is already being tested - so far, only on Facebook and Instagram and only for US and Canadian users.

Meta will be able to track your preferences based on the information you share. In particular, the company cites food allergies as an example: if you ask about such information, the AI assistant "will remember that information and use it to inform future recipe recommendations."

However, it is clear that the processing of your data will be much more extensive than remembering one message or one request.

"But the assistant will also be able to track other details about you, including information about your personal life and relationships (Meta will allow you to track Meta AI’s memories about you and remove specific details). Meta’s systems know a lot about their users, so these types of recommendations could be pretty far reaching and as eerily-accurate as Meta’s in-app advertising," engadget believes.

Meta reassures: AI will follow users only within certain limits.

"Other information from your profile like your age and gender, and interests based on your activity across our products, such as the types of content, including ads, you view or interact with and how you interact with it, may be used to help personalize your interactions with AI," Mark Zuckerberg's representatives assure.

As reported, Meta Platforms allowed political advertising on a number of Facebook and Instagram pages ahead of the presidential elections in Romania. These messages criticized the representative of the liberal conservatives Elena Lasconi and promoted far-right figures, including the pro-Russian candidate Kelin Georgescu. This caused a loud scandal.

According to the results of the investigation, the election campaign of the pro-Russian candidate Kelin Georgescu was financially backed by 36-year-old programmer Bogdan Peșchir, who received more than a million euros. He is known as the "king of TikTok" in the country.

Intelligence services have then found that Georgescu's popularity was due to an exceptionally aggressive social media campaign, and that Romania itself was the target of "aggressive hybrid Russian attacks."

Romanian prosecutors have already launched an investigation into "bribing voters, computer fraud, and money laundering" related to the presidential election, and the Constitutional Court of Romania has annulled the results of the first round of the presidential election.

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