Recently EU competition regulators said Meta’s AI-related fees or pricing structure could violate antitrust rules.
The Commission said antitrust laws in the EU are designed to prevent big tech companies from abusing market dominance, unfairly pricing services and limiting competition.
The European Commission said on Wednesday it intended to order Meta Platform to reinstate rival artificial intelligence assistants on its WhatsApp messaging service after the US tech giant imposed access fees.
“The Commission informed Meta that the revised policy appears to have the same effect as excluding third-party AI assistants from WhatsApp and thus prima facie appears to be in breach of EU competition rules,” the EU’s executive branch said.
It says interim measures, which the Commission imposes when there are concerns about harm to competition, will remain in place until the end of the investigation.
“To prevent serious and irreparable harm to competition, the Commission intends to order Meta to restore access for third-party AI assistants under the same conditions as before 15 October 2025,” it said in a statement.
Meta had earlier informed the Commission in March that it would allow rival AI assistants on WhatsApp for a year on a fee basis, following plans to ban third-party AI chatbots from WhatsApp Business.
“The European Commission is proposing to use its regulatory powers to enable some of the world’s largest companies to use the WhatsApp Business product for free for payments,” a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
“This means that a small bakery in France paying to use the service to take croissant orders will be picking up the tab for OpenAI.
Small European businesses should not have to foot the bill for OpenAI,” the spokesperson said.
The commission also said its investigation had been expanded to Italy, where the Italian competition watchdog started its own investigation last year.
