WhatsApp is allowing AI providers to continue offering their chatbots to users with Brazilian phone numbers, days after the country’s competition regulator ordered Meta to suspend its new policy barring third-party general-purpose chatbots from being offered to the app through its business API.
Under the new policy, the company is giving a 90-day grace period from January 15 to AI developers and providers, forcing them to stop answering user queries on the chat app and notify users that their chatbots will not work on WhatsApp.
Now Meta has told developers they don’t need to notify users with Brazilian phone numbers (with a +55 code) of any changes or stop offering their services, according to a notice to AI providers seen by TechCrunch.
“The requirement that we stop responding to user queries and implement pre-approved auto-responder language (listed below) before January 15, 2026 no longer applies when messaging people with a Brazilian country code (+55),” the notice states.
WhatsApp did not immediately respond to a query seeking confirmation of the decision.
The policy, which goes into effect today, affects general-purpose chatbots like ChatGPT and Grok on the platform. Specifically, the policy does not prevent businesses from providing customer service via bots within WhatsApp to their customers.
In its statement, Brazil’s competition agency said it will investigate whether Meta’s terms exclude competitors and unduly favor Meta AI, the company’s chatbot offered on WhatsApp.
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Meta had previously granted a similar exemption to users in Italy after the country’s competition agency challenged the policy in December. Separately, the EU also opened an antitrust investigation into the new rules.
The company has consistently argued that AI chatbots strain its systems designed for different uses of its business API. Meta has said in the past that people who want to use different chatbots can do so outside of WhatsApp.
“These allegations are fundamentally false,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said in response to CADE’s investigation on Tuesday. “The introduction of AI chatbots to our Business API put a burden on our systems that they weren’t designed to support. This logic assumes that WhatsApp is somehow a de facto app store. The path to market for AI companies is the app stores themselves, their websites and industry partnerships, not the WhatsApp business platform.”
