Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has announced that it will allow the integration of competing artificial intelligence assistants in WhatsApp over the next 12 months. This decision comes as a direct response to pressure from the European Commission, which had threatened to impose provisional measures to curb what it considers to be an anticompetitive practice.
In October 2025, Meta decided to amend the API policy for WhatsApp businesses in order to prevent third parties from offering general-purpose chatbots within the application. That regulation took effect on January 15, 2026, triggering the commencement of antitrust investigations by the European Commission. The objective was to prevent MetaAI from becoming the only AI assistant available on WhatsApp.
This measure impacted technology companies and developers such as OpenAI (ChatGPT), Perplexity, Microsoft (Copilot), and the Spanish company Luzia. Swiftly, Meta was eliminating major competitors and turning its tool into the only general-purpose AI assistant accessible to WhatsApp users. At the time, the company led by Mark Zuckerberg explained that AI chatbots were overloading its systems and their usage was diverging from the true purpose of the WhatsApp Business API, which is to help businesses provide customer support and send relevant updates.
Thus, in February we reported how the European Commission had delivered a statement of objections to Meta, warning that the company led by Mark Zuckerberg could be violating the European Union’s competition rules. As explained by the Commission in its press release, “there is an urgent need for safeguards due to the risk of serious and irreparable harm to competition. Meta’s conduct risks creating barriers to entry and expansion, and irreparably sidelining smaller competitors in the general-purpose AI assistant market.”
In order to avert a penalty or legal action that could have been much more severe, Meta has proposed a temporary solution. In this way, AI developers will once again be able to operate through the WhatsApp Business API, thanks to an agreement valid for one year, which Meta considers sufficient time for the European Commission to conclude its technical investigation.
These measures will not only affect Europe, but will also extend to Brazil, where the judiciary has also recently intervened.
In any case, and despite the announcement, the developer community cannot declare complete victory just yet. Meta’s decision brings with it an unforeseen consequence: the cost. Meta has transitioned from a complete blockade to a fee-based access system, with a fee ranging from €0.0490 to €0.1323 per non-template message, depending on the country. A few minutes of quick calculations will show that conversations with AI assistants involve multiple messages per interaction, which could result in very high final costs for providers of these tools.
A spokesperson for the European Commission explained that the body is reviewing the decision announced by Meta as part of its ongoing investigation.
Image: Gemini
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