EU Commission Orders Meta to Restore Free Access to Rival AI Chatbots on WhatsApp

Yesterday, the EU Commission ordered Meta to restore free access to rival AI chatbots in WhatsApp to “prevent serious and irreparable harm to competition.” The interim measure follows the opening of an antitrust investigation into Meta’s decision to block access to its WhatsApp Business API to other chatbots in December.

Until January, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and other AI chatbots could use this API to interact with WhatsApp users. But in late 2025, Meta updated WhatsApp’s platform policies to block that, leaving Meta AI the only chatbot available in WhatsApp.

However, the opening of the EU investigation in December forced Meta to partially backtrack: In March, the company agreed to restore access to its business API to rival chatbots, but for a fee. The EU Commission, which previously said in February that it was considering interim measures to restore competition, ultimately  determined that the new fees were “equivalent to the previous access ban.”

The root of the problem is that the EU regulator considers that WhatsApp has been enjoying “a dominant position in the EEA-wide market for consumer communication applications since at least January 2023.” As a result, the Commission believes that there’s an “urgent need to prevent a risk of serious damage to the competitive structure in the growing market for general-purpose AI assistants.”

“Today’s decision orders Meta to re-instate access for third-party general-purpose AI assistants to the WhatsApp for Business API under the same terms and conditions that were in place before 15 October 2025, when such access was notably free of charge for all such AI assistants. Meta has to maintain access on those terms and conditions until the Commission adopts a final decision on this case,” the EU Commission said yesterday.

Meta has 5 working days to comply with these interim measures. Otherwise, the company could face fines of up to 10% of its annual revenue, but a Meta spokesperson already told Politico that the company will appeal the decision.

“The European Commission has decided that OpenAI and some of the largest companies in the world can use the paid-for WhatsApp Business product for free. This is regulatory overreach subsidised by the many European companies that pay. We will appeal,” the spokesperson said.