On March 5, Meta announced that it would allow rival AI assistants to access WhatsApp for twelve months, in order to avoid a potential emergency injunction from European antitrust regulators.
The move follows complaints from rivals who had their access to the messaging service blocked.
The European Commission had threatened last month to take provisional measures to prevent serious and irreparable harm to Meta’s competitors after the company blocked their access to WhatsApp. A move similar to what the Italian competition authority had already undertaken in December.
Meta told the Commission that rival chatbots would now be allowed to access WhatsApp for a fee, via the WhatsApp Business API.
“For the next twelve months, we will support general-purpose AI chatbots using the WhatsApp Business API in Europe, in response to the European Commission’s regulatory process,” said a Meta spokesperson, adding that this measure “removes the need for any immediate intervention.”
The Commission remains cautious about the effectiveness of the measure
The Commission indicated that it was analyzing how the announced changes might influence its review of provisional measures, as well as its broader antitrust investigation.
Meta had thus far justified the restriction by arguing that the proliferation of chatbots on its platforms was overloading its systems, and that there were other channels for AI providers such as app stores, search engines, email, or operating systems.
The company had furthermore already allowed rival AIs on WhatsApp in Italy in January, under an injunction from the local regulator, an investigation into which continues. The measure will also apply in Brazil, after a court on Wednesday reinstated an injunction from the Brazilian competition authority, suspended by another instance in January.
But Meta’s concession is far from unanimous. The Interaction Company, a California-based developer of the Poke.com assistant and a complainant to European and Italian regulators, urged Brussels to maintain its emergency measures.
Its chief executive Marvin von Hagen argued that “what Meta presents as good-faith compliance is in fact the opposite,” the company introducing, in his view, “punitive pricing for AI providers that makes operating on WhatsApp as impossible as a straight ban.” He also dismissed the Italian workaround: “It simply replaces one anticompetitive restriction with another.”
