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EU Signals It Will Impose Interim Measures on Meta in WhatsApp AI Probe

Provided by Dow Jones Feb 9, 2026, 9:41:00 AM

By Edith Hancock

The European Union sent a statement of objections to Meta Platforms on Monday as part of its investigation into how the tech giant treats rival artificial-intelligence chatbots on its WhatsApp messaging service.

The European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, said it intends to impose interim measures on Meta after it changed its policies to prevent competing chatbots from tapping into a tool for businesses to communicate with customers via WhatsApp.

A Meta spokesperson said that the commission has wrongly assumed that WhatsApp's business programming interface is a key distribution channel for chatbots. "There are many AI options and people can use them from app stores, operating systems, devices, websites and industry partnerships," the spokesperson said.

Write to Edith Hancock at edith.hancock@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 09, 2026 04:41 ET (09:41 GMT)

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