European Commission forces Meta to accept third-party chatbots in WhatsApp for free

Back in November of last year, Meta banned third-party chatbots in WhatsApp, but of course the company has its own one built right in. The EU authorities have taken issue with this, and the European Commission (EC) specifically has now ordered Meta to restore access to "rival general-purpose AI assistants" in WhatsApp for free, and maintain it until the end of the EC's antitrust investigation into the original move by Meta to ban them.

The Commission's press release says this will "prevent serious and irreparable harm to competition in this growing market by Meta's conduct, which at first sight infringes EU competition rules". The EC's antitrust investigation into Meta's ban of third-party chatbots in WhatsApp started in December, and in February it "preliminarily concluded that interim measures may be required to prevent Meta's policy change from causing serious and irreparable harm on the market".

This order represents the aforementioned interim measures. The EC's order is based on the fact that "Meta has at first sight held a dominant position in the European Economic Area-wide market for consumer communication applications since at least January 2023", and the company has been "abusing this dominant position by preventing competing general-purpose AI assistants from using the WhatsApp for Business API".

The EC concluded that, at first sight, Meta's ban on third-party chatbots in WhatsApp "constituted a refusal to provide access to an infrastructure developed and previously open to third parties". In March, Meta accepted third-party general-purpose AI assistants in WhatsApp, but only for a fee, which, the EC says, "is a practice equivalent to the previous access ban".

Today's order makes Meta go back to the status quo before October 2025, when third-party AI chatbots had access to WhatsApp for free. Meta has to maintain access on those terms until the EC adopts a final decision on this case.

Source