{"id":167865,"date":"2025-12-04T15:06:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T15:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/167865\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T15:06:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T15:06:12","slug":"eu-investigating-meta-over-policy-change-that-bans-rival-ai-chatbots-from-whatsapp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/167865\/","title":{"rendered":"EU investigating Meta over policy change that bans rival AI chatbots from WhatsApp"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meta\u2019s decision to serve only its AI chatbot, Meta AI, to WhatsApp users isn\u2019t sitting well with the competition regulators in Europe. The European Commission on Thursday said<\/a> it is launching an antitrust investigation into Meta\u2019s move to ban other AI companies from using WhatsApp\u2019s business tools to offer their own AI chatbots to users on the app.<\/p>\n

WhatsApp in October changed its business API policy<\/a> to ban general-purpose chatbots from the chat app, saying that the API isn\u2019t designed to be a platform for the distribution of chatbots. The policy change, which goes into effect in January, would affect the availability of AI chatbots from the likes of OpenAI, Perplexity, and Poke on the app.<\/p>\n

Notably, this move doesn\u2019t affect businesses that are using AI to serve customers on WhatsApp. For instance, a retailer running an AI-powered customer service bot won\u2019t be barred from using the API. Only AI chatbots like ChatGPT are prohibited from being distributed via the API.<\/p>\n

In its statement, the EU\u2019s executive arm said it was concerned that the policy may \u201cprevent third-party AI providers from offering their services through WhatsApp in the European Economic Area (\u2018EEA\u2019).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result of the new policy, competing AI providers may be blocked from reaching their customers through WhatsApp. On the other hand, Meta\u2019s own AI service \u2018Meta AI\u2019 would remain accessible to users on the platform,\u201d the Commission wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI markets are booming in Europe and beyond. We 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 Teresa Ribera, executive vice-president for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition at the European Commission, said in a statement. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why we are investigating if Meta\u2019s new policy might be illegal under competition rules, and whether we should act quickly to prevent any possible irreparable harm to competition in the AI space,\u201d Ribera said.<\/p>\n

If Meta is found guilty of breaching EU\u2019s antitrust rules, it may be fined up to 10% of its global annual revenue, and the Commission may impose additional measures on the company.<\/p>\n

WhatsApp, for its part, called the EU\u2019s claims \u201cbaseless,\u201d and said people have many other options to use rival AI companies\u2019 chatbots. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe emergence of AI chatbots on our Business API puts a strain on our systems that they were not designed to support,\u201d a spokesperson for WhatsApp said in an emailed statement. \u201cEven still, the AI space is highly competitive and people have access to the services of their choice in any number of ways, including app stores, search engines, email services, partnership integrations, and operating systems.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meta\u2019s decision to serve only its AI chatbot, Meta AI, to WhatsApp users isn\u2019t sitting well with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,22671,109223,363,364,30536,898,111,139,69,145,19607],"class_list":{"0":"post-167865","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-chatbots","10":"tag-antitrust-investigation","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-artificialintelligence","13":"tag-european-commission","14":"tag-meta","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-technology","19":"tag-whatsapp"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}