Brazil asks Meta to suspend policy banning third-party AI chatbots from WhatsApp

Brazil’s competition watchdog has ordered WhatsApp to suspend its policy preventing third-party AI companies from using its business API to deliver chatbots on the app. The agency also launched an investigation against the company to determine whether the policy was anti-competitive.

“According to the investigations, there is potential anti-competitive behavior of an exclusive nature arising from the application of the new WhatsApp Terms (“WhatsApp Business Solution Terms”) imposed by Meta to regulate the access and offer of its technologies, by providers of artificial intelligence tools, to WhatsApp users,” said the Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (CADE).”

CADE said it would investigate whether Meta’s terms were exclusionary of competitors and unjustifiably favored Meta AI, the company’s chatbot offered on WhatsApp.

Last October, Meta changed the terms of use for the WhatsApp Business API to prevent third-party AI companies from offering their own chatbots on the app. Companies like OpenAI, Perplexity, and Microsoft soon noticed that after the policy came into effect from January 15, their chatbots would no longer be featured on WhatsApp. Notably, Meta’s policy does not prevent companies from offering their own chatbots, AI-powered or otherwise, within WhatsApp to their customers.

The CADE investigation comes after the European Union launched its own antitrust investigation into the new policy, as Italy did. If the European Union finds Meta in violation of its antitrust rules, it could be fined up to 10% of its global revenue.

Meta has told AI service providers that they can continue offering AI chatbots to users in Italy even after the new rules take effect on January 15, according to a notice to developers seen by TechCrunch. The company can make a similar decision in Brazil upon CADE’s request.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.

The company has consistently maintained that its AI chatbots strain its systems that are designed for different uses of its business API. Meta has said in the past that people who want to use different chat software can do so outside of WhatsApp.

“The purpose of the WhatsApp Business API is to help businesses provide customer support and send relevant updates. Our focus is on supporting the tens of thousands of businesses building these experiences on WhatsApp,” a Meta spokesperson said when the company changed the terms in October.