EU orders Meta to restore rival AI chatbots on WhatsApp

The European Union ordered Meta to restore free access for rival AI chatbots on WhatsApp within five working days, escalating a fight over whether a dominant messaging platform can use distribution control to shut out competitors. The interim measure, backed by the threat of fines as high as 10% of Meta’s annual global turnover, will remain in place while regulators investigate whether the company’s policy broke competition rules.

The case began after Meta announced an update to its WhatsApp Business Solution terms in October 2025. The new policy took effect on January 15, 2026 and left Meta AI as the only assistant available on WhatsApp after competitors were excluded. The European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation on December 4, 2025 after complaints from The Interaction Company of California, which develops the Poke.com assistant, along with French startup Agentik and a Spanish rival.

Brussels said the fee-based approach Meta later introduced looked, at first sight, like an extension of the earlier access ban. In a February 9 statement, the Commission said WhatsApp was an important entry point for general-purpose AI assistants to reach consumers and warned that Meta’s conduct risked raising barriers to entry and irreparably marginalising smaller rivals in a fast-growing market. The order can last until the probe ends, or at the latest until June 2029, giving the dispute an unusually long runway.

Teresa Ribera, the EU antitrust chief, said officials needed to restore access while they examine whether the restrictions violate competition law. The intervention marked the European Commission’s first interim measure in 17 years and only its second use of that emergency power in more than two decades, underscoring how seriously Brussels views the risk that platform gatekeeping could harden into market power before AI competition matures.

Meta said it would appeal and called the move regulatory overreach. The company argued that the policy would effectively subsidize competitors such as OpenAI at the expense of European businesses that pay to use the platform. Meta also said WhatsApp’s business interface was never designed to carry AI chatbots and that rivals can still reach users through app stores, operating systems, devices, websites and partnerships.

The fight is not limited to Brussels. The Italian Competition Authority folded its own probe into the EU case, and Brazilian competition authorities forced Meta to reopen access there in March 2026. Meta is also appealing a separate 200 million euro EU fine, a sign that its relationship with Brussels has become one of the defining tests of who sets the rules for AI competition: platform owners, regulators, or the market itself.