Tech giant Meta, the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg, is all set to give free access to social messaging service “Whatsapp” to its rival AI chatbots.
Meta Platform has offered rival AI chatbots, including OpenAI, free access to its social messaging service WhatsApp in Europe, but they will start charging them once a threshold is reached.
Details of the offer come as the tech and social media giants that also control Facebook seek to appease EU regulators who are cracking down on Big Tech.
Meta submitted its proposal to EU antitrust regulators last week after the European Commission said it was considering an order that would require the company to provide access to WhatsApp to rivals until its ongoing investigation into the matter is completed. Neither party provided any details of the proposal.
Interested parties had until May 18 to provide feedback to the commission before it decided whether to accept Meta’s proposal, the people said.
Under the offer, Meta will start charging rival AI chatbots once they reach a threshold in terms of messages sent to users, two sources said.
The broader case underlines how the EU seeks to ensure competition in new digital markets by preventing regulatory Big Tech from gaining market power or thwarting smaller rivals.
Reiterating earlier comments, Meta said it has given rival AI chatbots in Europe free access to WhatsApp’s business application programming interface (API) for a month while it seeks to resolve the issue with EU regulators. API is a type of software interface that determines how two software systems will interact.
However, smaller rivals said they were not affected.
“Unfortunately, Meta’s current proposal falls far short of resolving any of the competition concerns identified in this case,” the California-based interaction company said.
