The European Commission has told Meta it intends to impose “interim measures” to stop the tech giant from excluding third-party AI assistants from WhatsApp.
On Monday, the EU informed the company that its preliminary view was that it had “breached” EU antitrust rules. The investigation is still ongoing, and measures are subject to Meta’s reply and rights of defense, the Commission said.
The bloc’s Commissioner for Competition, Teresa Ribera, said it would prevent “dominant tech companies to illegally leverage their dominance to give themselves an unfair advantage” to protect “effective competition.”
“AI markets are developing at rapid pace, so we also need to be swift in our action. That is why we are considering quickly imposing interim measures on Meta, to preserve access for competitors to WhatsApp, while the investigation is ongoing, and avoid Meta’s new policy irreparably harming competition in Europe,” she added.
In October, Meta announced an update to its WhatsApp Business Solution Terms, “effectively” banning third-party general-purpose AI assistants from the application, the commission said. The policy came into effect in January.
A commission spokesperson told CNBC that interim measures would involve it asking Meta to maintain third-party AI assistants’ access to WhatsApp under the terms before the policy change, while its investigation.
“The facts are that there is no reason for the EU to intervene in the WhatsApp Business API,” a Meta spokesperson said.
“There are many AI options and people can use them from app stores, operating systems, devices, websites, and industry partnerships. The Commission’s logic incorrectly assumes the WhatsApp Business API is a key distribution channel for these chatbots,” they added.
This is a breaking news story. Refresh for updates.
