{"id":275504,"date":"2026-02-09T17:35:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T17:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/275504\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T17:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T17:35:10","slug":"eu-tells-meta-to-allow-room-for-rival-ai-assistants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/275504\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Tells Meta to Allow Room for Rival AI Assistants"},"content":{"rendered":"

European competition regulators say\u00a0Meta<\/a>\u2019s artificial intelligence (AI) assistant policy violates antitrust regulations.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0European Commission<\/a>\u00a0(EC)\u00a0announced<\/a> Monday (Feb. 9) that it sent a statement of objections to the tech giant, stating the watchdog\u2019s \u201cpreliminary view\u201d that Meta breached EU antitrust rules by preventing third-party AI assistants from accessing WhatsApp.<\/p>\n

The commission said in its announcement that it plans to impose \u201cinterim measures to prevent this policy change from causing serious and irreparable harm on the market, subject to Meta\u2019s reply and rights of defence.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the EC, its action stems from an update Meta made to its WhatsApp Business Solution Terms in October, which the commission said effectively banned third-party general-purpose AI assistants from the application.<\/p>\n

Since Jan. 15, the only AI assistant available on WhatsApp is Meta AI, while rival companies have been excluded. The commission began\u00a0investigating the issue<\/a>\u00a0in December.<\/p>\n

In a statement provided to PYMNTS, a spokesperson for Meta said there is no reason for the commission to intervene in the WhatsApp Business API.<\/p>\n

Advertisement: Scroll to Continue<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many AI options and people can use them from app stores, operating systems, devices, websites, and industry partnerships,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Commission\u2019s logic incorrectly assumes the WhatsApp Business API is a key distribution channel for these chatbots.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company also notes that the same issue was dismissed when it came before a court in Brazil. Meta has said that the rise of AI chatbots placed a strain on the WhatsApp Business API that it was not created to support.<\/p>\n

The regulatory showdown comes as \u2014 per PYMNTS Intelligence data \u2014 consumers are showing interest in using\u00a0autonomous AI assistants<\/a>\u00a0for everyday planning, even as a sizable number of people remain cautious about relinquishing control.<\/p>\n

The research found that a third of consumers would be interested in an autonomous AI assistant dealing with at least some of their everyday planning, indicating early but notable demand for agentic AI in personal contexts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe data suggests the\u00a0next phase<\/a>\u00a0of consumer AI adoption will hinge less on conversation and more on trust, task specificity and perceived value,\u201d PYMNTS wrote in December.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, resistance remains strong among holdouts. About 44% of consumers who currently do not use conversational AI say they would not allow an autonomous AI agent to perform any personal task included in the survey,\u201d that report added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European competition regulators say\u00a0Meta\u2019s artificial intelligence (AI) assistant policy violates antitrust regulations. The\u00a0European Commission\u00a0(EC)\u00a0announced Monday (Feb. 9) that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,30536,2487,898,111,43,139,69,145,741,19607],"class_list":{"0":"post-275504","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-european-commission","12":"tag-european-union","13":"tag-meta","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-technology","19":"tag-whats-hot","20":"tag-whatsapp"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275504","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=275504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}