Facebook didn't claim they don't record what you say.
They said very specifically they don't record what you say for advertising. It was specific enough that it almost seems an admission that they use it for something else.
However, there are plausible explanations for your spouse getting ads for things she's spoken with her phone in the room - for example, the patient googled the medication later or wrote about it on facebook, and facebook knows thay your spouse and the patient likely had a conversation based on location data showing that they walked down a hallway together.
I still call maximum shenanigans on that whole concept. You'd think there'd be one hacker out there with a packet dump or disassembly of the application (yknow.. concrete evidence) rather than lame anecdotes that reek of confirmation bias.
Furthermore, I don't believe that Google and Apple (well.. less Google, more Apple) are in cahoots with Facebook to give them a backdoor to device permissions.
Unless I’m mistaken the “deep access” is just bad reporting (the media are surfing on the wave of Facebook bashing).
What they mean by deep access is that the Facebook sharing system extension built into some OSes (including iOS pre iOS 9) had the possibility of accessing a lot of information from the connected Facebook account, which is not really anything to worry about (if your device’s OS is malicious you have way more to worry about).
They said very specifically they don't record what you say for advertising. It was specific enough that it almost seems an admission that they use it for something else.
However, there are plausible explanations for your spouse getting ads for things she's spoken with her phone in the room - for example, the patient googled the medication later or wrote about it on facebook, and facebook knows thay your spouse and the patient likely had a conversation based on location data showing that they walked down a hallway together.