EU Investigates Meta's Restrictions on WhatsApp AI Access

The European Commission has initiated a formal inquiry into Meta's conduct regarding artificial intelligence competition, stemming from complaints filed by several European technology firms.

Companies including The Interaction Company—developer of the Poke.com smart assistant—alongside Agentik and a Spanish competitor lodged grievances accusing Meta of leveraging its dominance in instant messaging to obstruct rivals' access to WhatsApp Business services. The Commission formally opened its investigation in December 2025.

According to the findings, Meta took action in October 2025 by blocking competing AI services from the WhatsApp Business API while granting exemptions to its own "meta ai" assistant. Though the company subsequently permitted competitors onto the platform, the fees it established were deemed prohibitively expensive by regulators, effectively preventing meaningful market competition.

European officials contend that Meta's pricing strategy is deliberately exclusionary. Teresa Ribera, a key figure in the investigation, stated that competing companies cannot sustain operations under the imposed financial terms and rejected Meta's justifications as unconvincing. She emphasized that available evidence points to Meta exploiting WhatsApp's market dominance to promote its own AI offering while systematically excluding competitors during a period of significant AI sector expansion across Europe.

Under the Commission's interim order, Meta must provide complimentary access to WhatsApp for competing artificial intelligence services—including those developed by OpenAI—until either June 2029 or the conclusion of the formal investigation, whichever occurs sooner.

Meta has responded critically to the directive, asserting that regulators are compelling the company to furnish a commercial service to competitors at no cost. The company has signaled its intention to mount a legal challenge, maintaining that the measure damages its commercial interests and erodes its capacity to generate revenue from WhatsApp Business operations.