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) said on Wednesday that it had found sufficient grounds in its ongoing investigation into whether Meta was abusing its dominant market position to offer its Meta AI chatbot within WhatsApp to order the suspension of the policy.
“Meta’s behavior appears to constitute abuse, as it may limit production, market access or technical developments in the market for AI Chatbot services, to the detriment of consumers,” the Authority wrote. “Furthermore, while the investigation is ongoing, Meta’s conduct could cause serious and irreparable harm to competition in the relevant market, thereby undermining contestability.”
In November, the AGCM expanded the scope of an existing investigation into Meta, after the company changed its business API policy in October to prohibit general purpose chatbots from being offered on the chat app via the API.
Meta argued that its API is not designed to be a chatbot distribution platform and that users have more ways beyond WhatsApp to use other companies’ AI bots. The policy change, which will take effect in January, would affect the availability of AI chatbots like OpenAI, Perplexity and Poke on the app.
The policy does not affect businesses that use AI to serve their customers on WhatsApp. For example, a retailer running an AI-powered customer service bot will not be blocked from using the API. Only AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude are prohibited from distribution via API.
The European Commission also launched an investigation into the new policy this month, raising concerns that it could “prevent third-party AI providers from offering their services via WhatsApp in the European Economic Area (“EEA”).
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Calling the Authority’s decision “fundamentally flawed”, Meta said WhatsApp’s commercial API is not a route to market for AI companies.
“The emergence of AI chatbots on our Business API has put a strain on our systems that they were not designed to support. The Italian authority assumes that WhatsApp is something of a de facto app store. The route to market for AI companies lies in 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.
