The European Commission will order Meta to allow competing AI chatbots on its messaging service WhatsApp. The commission announced this on Wednesday. The move comes after the US tech group introduced an access fee at the beginning of March.
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In February, the EU Commission opened an investigation into Meta. The Commission believes that Meta is making it more difficult for its competitors to access WhatsApp data and is therefore violating European competition law. The competition watchdogs threatened coercive measures, whereupon Meta temporarily allowed competing AI assistants back on WhatsApp for a year in March and for a fee.
Alleged violation of competition rules
After analyzing the impact of these changes, the Commission has now told Meta that “the revised directive appears to have the same effect, namely the exclusion of third-party AI assistants from WhatsApp, and therefore prima facie violates EU competition rules.”
“To avoid serious and irreparable harm to competition, the Commission intends to order Meta to restore access to third-party AI assistants under the same conditions as before October 15, 2025,” it said in a statement quoted by Reuters. The Commission’s interim measure is therefore valid until the end of the investigation.
Reaction from Meta
Under EU law, competition authorities can order companies to temporarily stop business practices that are believed to violate European law. These instructions, in turn, can be challenged in the EU courts.
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“The European Commission plans to use its regulatory powers to allow some of the world’s largest companies to use the paid product WhatsApp Business for free,” a Meta spokesperson said in an email. “This means that a small bakery in France that pays to use the service to accept croissant orders will cover the cost of OpenAI. Small European businesses should not have to pay for OpenAI.”
The commission also announced on Wednesday that it would expand its investigation to Italy. This was previously excluded from the investigation because the Italian competition authority launched its own investigation last year into alleged distortions of competition caused by WhatsApp’s AI policy on suspicion of abuse of market dominance in the area of AI chatbots.
(akn)
