Italy is asking Meta to suspend its policy banning rival AI chatbots from WhatsApp

Italy has ordered Meta to suspend its policy prohibiting companies from using WhatsApp’s business tools to introduce their own AI-powered chatbots on the popular chat app.

The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) said on Wednesday that it had found sufficient reason in its ongoing investigation into whether Meta was exploiting its dominant market position to introduce its Meta AI chatbot within WhatsApp to issue an order suspending 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 agency wrote. “Furthermore, while the investigation is ongoing, Meta’s conduct may cause serious and irreparable harm to competition in the affected market, undermining competitiveness.”

The AGCM in November expanded the scope of its existing investigation into Meta, following the company It changed its business API policy in October To block general-purpose chatbots from being displayed on a chat application via the API.

Meta argued that its API is not designed to be a platform for distributing chatbots and that people have more ways outside of WhatsApp to use AI bots from other companies. The policy change, which takes effect in January, will impact the availability of AI-powered chatbots from the likes of OpenAI, Perplexity and Poke on the app.

This policy does not affect companies that use artificial intelligence for customer service on WhatsApp. For example, a retailer operating an AI-powered customer service bot will not be blocked from using the API. Only distributing AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude via API is prohibited.

The European Commission this month also launched an investigation into the new policy, raising concerns that it could “prevent third-party AI service providers from offering their services through WhatsApp in the European Economic Area (‘EEA’).”

Meta called the body’s decision “fundamentally flawed” and said WhatsApp’s business API is not a path to market for AI companies.

“The emergence of AI-based chatbots on our Business API has put pressure on our systems that were not designed to support them. The Italian authority assumes that WhatsApp is somehow an actual 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 a meta response to the decision.