The European Commission has stepped in with an emergency order demanding that Meta restore free access to WhatsApp for rival general-purpose AI assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
We’ve issued an interim order requiring Meta to restore free access to WhatsApp for rival AI assistants.
Our ongoing antitrust investigation aims to prevent dominant platforms from shutting out smaller innovators.
For a fair, competitive digital space ↓https://t.co/J1shQBSu3S pic.twitter.com/D2x2PYMtRB
— European Commission (@EU_Commission) June 9, 2026
This aggressive move aims to protect the fast-growing technology sector before smaller tech firms are squeezed out of the European market entirely.
The dispute stems from a quiet policy shift that Meta introduced back on 15 October 2025. The company updated its WhatsApp for Business Application Programming Interface rules, essentially banning all third-party artificial intelligence assistants from utilizing the software.
Before the restriction took effect in January 2026, European consumers could message a variety of independent AI tools directly through the application, including well-known models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Perplexity, and smaller regional digital assistants like Luzia or Poke.
Regulators quickly noticed the block and opened a formal abuse of dominance investigation in December 2025. Under pressure from Brussels, Meta attempted a compromise in March 2026 by offering to let competing bots back onto the system. However, the tech giant attached a high access fee to the offer. The European Commission rejected this proposal, stating that the high operational costs made the option economically impossible for start-ups, acting as a functional ban.
Meta later tried offering a single month of free access in May, but European authorities remained unsatisfied.
The temporary mandate forces Meta to reinstate free access within five working days under the exact same conditions that existed before the October 2025 policy change. These rules will remain active for the duration of the investigation, which could last until June 2029.
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