The EU has threatened to take action against social media company Meta, arguing it blocked rival chatbots from using its WhatsApp messaging platform.
European Commission Said It said on Monday that WhatsApp Business – which is designed for businesses to use to interact with customers – appears to violate EU antitrust rules.
The messaging platform’s upgrade last October means the only AI assistant available for use on WhatsApp is Meta AI, an agent developed by the US tech group, which also owns Facebook and Instagram.
The European Commission said that Meta was the dominant player in the EU market for messaging and was “abusing” this position by “denying access to WhatsApp to other businesses”.
The Commission said this situation could cause “serious and irreparable harm to the market”. It added that it “believes WhatsApp is an important entry point” for AI chatbots, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to “reach consumers.”
The warning comes amid rising tensions between European officials and the Donald Trump administration over regulation of American tech companies. brussels is Allegedly is preparing to step up enforcement of its key anti-competition rules and the Trump administration has Said This is “discriminatory” against American companies.
“It is very clear that we need to protect our market, a well-functioning market, by enforcing and enforcing our rules,” EU Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera told Bloomberg.
In December the US imposed sanctions on former European Commissioner Thierry Breton as well as four other European “activists”, accusing them of censorship and “suppressing American viewpoints”. The move was widely seen as an increase in response to European regulation of US tech platforms.
is breton challenging sanctions, and the Commission has announced that it will support it.
Asked about a possible US reaction to the EU’s moves against WhatsApp, Ribera said: “I don’t know how this could be read by any government, but my understanding is that it is not linked to politics, but to well-functioning markets.”
A spokesperson for Meta said: “The fact is that the EU has no reason to interfere with the WhatsApp Business API. There are many AI alternatives and people can use them across app stores, operating systems, devices, websites and industry partnerships.
“The Commission’s reasoning wrongly assumes that the WhatsApp Business API is a major distribution channel for these chatbots.”
Last month, Brazilian authorities brought a similar case against WhatsApp Business, saying the new terms constituted “potential anti-competitive practices,” according to Reuters. informed.
that was the case SuspendedMeta said its claims were “fundamentally false” and that “the emergence of AI chatbots on the WhatsApp Business platform overloads our systems, which were not designed for this type of support”.
