Italy has ordered Meta to suspend its policy barring companies from using WhatsApp’s business tools to offer their own AI chatbots on the popular chat app.
The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) on Wednesday he said had found sufficient reason in its ongoing investigation into whether Meta abused its dominant market position to offer its Meta AI chatbot within WhatsApp to order the suspension of the policy.
“Meta’s conduct appears to constitute abuse as it may limit production, market access or technical developments in the AI Chatbot services market, to the detriment of consumers,” the Authority wrote. “Furthermore, while the investigation is ongoing, Meta’s conduct may cause serious and irreparable harm to competition in the affected market by undermining the challenge.”
AGCM in November had widened the scope of an existing investigation into Meta, after the company changed its business API policy in October to prohibit the general purpose chatbot offering in the chat application through the API.
Meta argued that its API is not designed to be a platform for distributing chatbots and that people have more options beyond WhatsApp to use AI bots from other companies. The policy change, which will take effect in January, will affect the availability of AI chatbots from OpenAI, Perplexity and Poke in the app.
The policy does not affect businesses that use AI for customer service on WhatsApp. For example, a retailer running an AI-powered customer service bot will not be banned from using the API. Only AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT or Claude, are prohibited from being distributed through the API.
The European Commission also this month launched an investigation into the new policy, raising concerns that it may “prevent third-party AI providers from offering their services through WhatsApp in the European Economic Area (‘EEA’).”
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Calling the Authority’s decision “fundamentally flawed,” Meta said WhatsApp’s business API is not a route to market for AI companies.
“The appearance of AI chatbots in our Business API has put pressure on our systems that they were not designed to support. The Italian authority assumes that WhatsApp is somehow a defacto app store. The path to market for AI companies is the app stores themselves, their websites and industry partnerships, not the WhatsApp business platform. We will appeal,” Meta said in an emailed statement.
Note: This story has been updated to add Meta’s response to the ruling.
