EU Opens Antitrust Probe Into Meta Platforms Over WhatsApp AI Policy, Mulls Interim Measures — Update
By Edith Hancock
The European Commission opened an antitrust investigation into whether Meta Platforms' rules governing AI developers' access to the WhatsApp messaging platform hurt competition.
The European Union's executive branch said a policy that Meta announced this October might breach its competition rules.
"As a result of the new policy, competing AI providers may be blocked from reaching their customers through WhatsApp," the regulator said in a statement, also saying that users could still access Meta's own Meta AI service on the platform.
A spokesperson for Meta said the commission's claims are baseless. "The emergence of AI chatbots on our Business API puts a strain on our systems that they were not designed to support," the spokesperson said.
The investigation is the latest attempt by the EU to rein in Big Tech, despite strong objections by the Trump administration. The EU watchdog fined Meta 200 million euros ($233.4 million) earlier this year over an alleged breach of the Digital Markets Act, the bloc's legal text governing the digital economy's most powerful players.
It comes after Italy's competition regulator started scrutinizing how WhatsApp integrates AI into its platform earlier this year. The watchdog broadened the scope of its probe in November to factor in Meta's new policy, saying it could also impose interim measures.
Speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Brussels Thursday, Teresa Ribera, the bloc's top competition enforcer, said her team is also considering interim measures.
Write to Edith Hancock at edith.hancock@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 04, 2025 07:03 ET (12:03 GMT)
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