{"id":167783,"date":"2025-12-04T13:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T13:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/167783\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T13:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T13:37:07","slug":"the-eu-is-probing-meta-over-whatsapps-ai-chatbot-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/167783\/","title":{"rendered":"The EU is probing Meta over WhatsApp\u2019s AI chatbot restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">The European Union has launched a <a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/commission\/presscorner\/detail\/en\/ip_25_2896\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">formal investigation into Meta<\/a> over antitrust concerns with AI restrictions in WhatsApp. The probe aims to \u201cprevent any possible irreparable harm to competition in the AI space\u201d according to the EU, and follows Meta announcing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whatsapp.com\/legal\/business-solution-terms\/preview?lang=en\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">changes to WhatsApp\u2019s terms<\/a> for businesses in October that will prohibit companies from using the platform\u2019s API to distribute third-party AI chatbots.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">\u201cAs a result of the new policy, competing AI providers may be blocked from reaching their customers through WhatsApp,\u201d says the European Commission\u2019s announcement. \u201cOn the other hand, Meta\u2019s own AI service \u2018Meta AI\u2019 would remain accessible to users on the platform.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">The updated WhatsApp policy went into effect on October 15 for AI providers that don\u2019t already have services on the platform, and will apply to existing AI providers on WhatsApp starting January 15th, 2026. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/829808\/chatgpt-copilot-ai-llm-leaving-whatsapp-meta\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">OpenAI and Microsoft responded<\/a> to the policy changes earlier this year by announcing that ChatGPT and Copilot would be removed from the platform.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">The investigation will assess whether Meta violated the EU laws that \u201cprohibit the abuse of a dominant position\u201d to make it harder for smaller providers to compete with its own services. There is no deadline for the investigation. If Meta is ruled to have breached the bloc\u2019s antitrust rules, it may face fines up to 10 percent of the company\u2019s global annual revenue, working out at $16.45 billion (per Meta\u2019s 2024 earnings).<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">\u201cAI markets are booming in Europe and beyond,\u201d European competition commissioner Teresa Ribera said in the announcement. \u201cWe must ensure European citizens and businesses can benefit fully from this technological revolution and act to prevent dominant digital incumbents from abusing their power to crowd out innovative competitors.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Union has launched a formal investigation into Meta over antitrust concerns with AI restrictions in WhatsApp.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,8457,1430,43,4555,920,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-167783","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-law","14":"tag-meta","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-policy","17":"tag-tech","18":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}