Home / Technology / Meta's AI Chatbot Update Sparks Privacy Concerns
Meta's AI Chatbot Update Sparks Privacy Concerns
14 Nov
Summary
- Upcoming Meta policy change to personalize content
- Viral posts falsely claim access to all direct messages
- Meta denies reading private messages without user consent
As of November 14th, 2025, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is set to implement a policy change on December 16th that aims to "personalize content and ads recommendations" across its services. This change will allow Meta's AI chatbot to monitor user interactions, such as discussions about hiking, and then provide relevant recommendations for hiking groups, posts, or ads.
However, some viral social media posts have erroneously claimed that this update will give Meta access to read all direct messages on its platforms. A post from the Instagram account "HustleWithChip" with over 238,000 likes stated, "Meta will start reading your DMs on December 16. Every conversation. Every photo. Every voice message. Fed into AI. Used for Profit."
In response, a spokesperson for Meta has clarified that the company does not use the content of private messages to train its AI models unless the users themselves choose to share those messages. Meta's existing policies for end-to-end encrypted messaging on Messenger and WhatsApp also state that the company cannot access the content of those communications.
The upcoming policy change is intended to improve the personalization of content and advertisements, similar to how Meta's platforms currently use information from user interactions, such as watching an Instagram Reel, to recommend similar content in the future.
