Meta: Smarter Ads, Harder Questions

Meta is putting more artificial intelligence inside its ad business while separately expanding software that records how some employees use their work computers. (about.fb.com) (cnbc.com) Meta said in January it began testing a Meta AI business assistant with advertisers in the fourth quarter of 2025, and this week B&T reported the beta was widened to advertisers and agencies of all sizes in major markets including Asia-Pacific and Australia-New Zealand. The tool is built into Meta’s ad products and is pitched as account support plus personalized performance recommendations. (about.fb.com) (www.bandt.com.au) On April 22, CNBC reported that Meta’s internal Model Capability Initiative tracks employee activity across hundreds of websites and apps, including Google, LinkedIn and Wikipedia, using keystrokes, mouse clicks and other signals from work computers. Reuters first reported the program on April 21, and The Next Web said the system also takes periodic screenshots for context. (cnbc.com) (techcrunch.com) (thenextweb.com) The ad assistant and the employee-tracking project point at the same goal: getting more human behavior into Meta’s AI systems. In the ad business, that means a chatbot that remembers a marketer’s goals; inside Meta, it means turning staff workflows into training data for AI agents. (about.fb.com) (cnbc.com) Meta’s ad business is not a side project. The company said in January that artificial intelligence was already improving ranking, recommendations and content understanding across its apps, and nearly all of Meta’s revenue still comes from advertising, making advertiser tools a core product line. (about.fb.com) (success.com) Meta has framed the business assistant as a way to help advertisers optimize campaigns faster, while the company has framed the employee-monitoring system as an AI training effort rather than a performance-management program, according to reports citing internal documents. Critics quoted in coverage by Ars Technica and CNET said the rollout blurs the line between product development and workplace surveillance. (www.bandt.com.au) (arstechnica.com) (cnet.com) The mechanics are simple enough: ad assistants learn from campaign goals, budgets and past results, while AI agents learn from examples of how people click, type and navigate software. Meta’s own January post said more businesses would be able to chat with an assistant that “remembers their goals,” and CNBC reported the employee tool observes actions on work devices to collect training data. (about.fb.com) (cnbc.com) The timing puts both efforts in the same April news cycle, with Meta also publicizing new AI products from its Superintelligence Labs this month. That leaves the company selling AI help to advertisers while answering questions about how much data it is willing to collect from its own workers to build the next version. (about.fb.com) (cnbc.com) (thenextweb.com)