The European Commission has mandated that the US tech giant Meta must grant competitive AI assistants unfettered access to WhatsApp. According to the EU Commission on Tuesday, this access must be maintained until the conclusion of the ongoing antitrust proceedings.
Brussel stated that this requirement aims to prevent Meta’s conduct from causing “serious and irreparable damage to competition” within this expanding market.
In December 2025, the Commission initiated an antitrust investigation into Meta’s new policy, which excluded external AI providers from WhatsApp, leaving only Meta’s own service, “Meta AI,” with access.
Meta has held a dominant position in the consumer communications app market within the European Economic Area through WhatsApp since at least 2023. The Commission suggests that Meta abused this dominant position by denying rival general AI assistants access to the “WhatsApp for Business” Application Programming Interface (API).
Although Meta reinstated general AI assistants from other providers onto WhatsApp in March, the company imposed a fee. The EU Commission believes this fee effectively constituted the previous denial of access. However, the Commission ordered Meta to restore third-party general AI assistants’ access to the “WhatsApp for Business” API under the exact same conditions that existed before October 15, 2025, when access was free for all these AI assistants.
