Meta Expands AI Personalization Using External Business Data

Meta is rolling out a new global update—excluding a few countries—that will harness data from third‑party businesses to tailor both its AI responses and the main content feeds users see.

While the platform already leverages users’ shopping habits to serve targeted ads, the company now intends to extend this tracking to refine other facets of the experience, such as feed algorithms and the AI assistant’s conversations.

Users who prefer to keep Meta from shaping their feeds and AI interactions with external data can simply disable the “Activity from other businesses” toggle in their account settings. This switch, located within the Accounts Center, applies across all connected profiles. Disabling it will not prevent third‑party companies from sending data to Meta; the platform will still gather web interactions for product training while continuing to access connected external accounts.

In a conversation with The Verge, Meta spokesperson Emil Vazquez revealed that the upcoming update will initially exclude several regions such as Europe, the UK, Brazil, Thailand, South Africa, Turkey, South Korea, Ecuador, Nigeria, and Kenya from its launch. This decision comes at a critical juncture for the social media giant, which is currently navigating through a significant PR crisis involving generative AI.

Last week, Instagram witnessed a major security breach where attackers successfully manipulated Meta AI to transfer account ownership, even in cases where 2FA was enabled. Affected accounts included high-profile entities like the dormant Obama White House profile, cosmetics brand Sephora, the Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force, and security researcher Jane Manchun Wong.

The internal operations of Meta have also been impacted, with the company scaling back plans for its Model Capability Initiative (MCI), an employee-monitoring program that records worker keystrokes and screen activity to train corporate AI models. This decision was prompted by privacy concerns raised by employees and complaints about excessive battery drain.