To the surprise of absolutely no one, Meta will soon use your conversations with its AI chatbots to serve you even more hyper-targeted ads.
What happened: The owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp said it will use the data collected from its AI services (via voice and text) to target ads across its products. Meta has spent more than US$30 billion this year alone on the AI tech, which powers its virtual assistant chatbot on its social platforms and smart glasses.
Why it matters: The era of companies trying to monetize AI is upon us. Meta’s move is just the latest example of tech companies looking to recoup at least a portion of the massive AI investments they’ve made.
- OpenAI announced on Monday that ChatGPT would begin recommending products that users could buy without leaving the app.
- Google already started putting ads in its AI overviews at the top of search results earlier this year.
Bottom line: Some tech leaders believe their AI investments will eventually spawn a superintelligent machine god that will solve many of the world’s problems. Until then, they need to figure out how to use it to make money in more prosaic ways, and advertising is certainly a tried-and-true — if less exciting — business model.—TS