The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) issued a ruling ordering Meta to immediately suspend its policy of prohibiting enterprises from providing third-party AI chat robots in chat applications through the WhatsApp business tool. The regulator indicated that, in an investigation into whether Meta abused a dominant market position to promote its own AI chat robot, sufficient evidence had been found to support the interim ban.
In its statement, the regulator stated: “Meta’s behaviour may constitute an abuse of a dominant position in the market, as it limits production, market access or technological development in the AIT services market to the detriment of consumers. Allowing the policy to continue during the investigation may cause serious and irreversible damage to competition in the relevant market and weaken the competitiveness of the market.” This ruling stems from the fact that AGCM expanded its investigation of Meta last November. Meta changed the commercial API policy in October last year to explicitly prohibit the provision of universal chat robotic services on the WhatsApp via the interface. It is planned that this policy will come into effect in January of this year and is expected to affect the service provided by the AI chat robots of OpenAI, Perplexity and Poke on the WhatsApp.
Meta argued that its commercial API was not designed for distribution of chat robots and that users could use other companies ‘ AI robots through a variety of channels outside the WhatsApp. The impact policy limits the distribution of generic AI chat robots, such as ChatGPT or Claude, through API, to businesses such as retailers that use AI to service customers. The European Commission also announced this month that it would launch an investigation into the policy, fearing that it might “stop third-party AI providers from providing services in the EU economic zone through the WhatsApp”. In an e-mail statement, Meta refuted the assertion that the decisions of the Italian regulator were “fundamental errors” and stressed that “whatsApp Commercial API is not a market route for AI enterprises. The emergence of the AI chat robot on our commercial API has put pressure on the system to overload the design load. The Italian authorities wrongly regard Whatsapp as a default app store, and in fact the market route for AI enterprises should be the app store itself, official websites and industry cooperation, rather than the Whatsapp business platform. We shall appeal.”
