The European says it plans to impose interim measures to prevent Meta from blocking third-party AI assistants on WhatsApp.

On Monday, EU regulators informed the company of their preliminary finding that Meta may have breached EU antitrust rules.

The Commission added that the investigation is ongoing, and any measures will depend on Meta’s response and its rights of defence.

The bloc’s Competition Commissioner, Teresa Ribera, said the move is aimed at preventing dominant tech companies from illegally leveraging their market power to give themselves an unfair advantage, thereby protecting effective competition.
“AI markets are developing at rapid pace, so we also need to be swift in our action. That is why we are considering quickly imposing interim measures on Meta, to preserve access for competitors to WhatsApp, while the investigation is ongoing, and avoid Meta’s new policy irreparably harming competition in Europe,” she added.

In October, Meta announced changes to its WhatsApp Business Solution Terms that, according to the Commission, effectively banned third-party general-purpose AI assistants from the app.

The policy took effect in January.