The EU threatened to take action against the social media company Metaarguing that it blocked rival chatbots from using its WhatsApp messaging platform.
The European Commission said On Monday, WhatsApp Business – designed to be used by businesses to interact with their customers – appeared to breach EU antitrust rules.
An upgrade to the messaging platform last October means the only AI assistant available on WhatsApp is Meta AI, the agent developed by the US technology group, which also owns Facebook and Instagram.
THE European Commission said Meta was the dominant messaging player in the EU market and was “abusing” this position by “denying access to WhatsApp to other companies”.
This position could cause “serious and irreparable harm to the market,” the commission added. He said he “sees WhatsApp as an important entry point” for AI chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to “reach consumers”.
The warning comes amid heightened tensions between European authorities and Donald Trump’s administration over the regulation of American technology companies. Brussels is would have is preparing to step up enforcement of its key anticompetitive rules and the Trump administration has said it is “discriminatory” against American companies.
“It is very obvious that we have to defend, implement and enforce our rules, defend our market, a market that works well,” EU Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera told Bloomberg.
In December, the United States imposed sanctions against former European Commissioner Thierry Breton as well as four other European “activists”, accusing them of censorship and “repressing American points of view”. The move was widely seen as an escalation in response to European regulation of US technology platforms.
Breton is stimulating sanctions, and the commission announced that it would support it.
Asked about a possible US response to the EU measures against WhatsApp, Ribera said: “I don’t know how this can be interpreted by a government, but I have the feeling that it is not linked to politics, but to the proper functioning of markets. »
A Meta spokesperson said: “The facts are that there is no reason for the EU to intervene in the WhatsApp Business API. There are many AI options and people can use them from app stores, operating systems, devices, websites and industry partnerships.”
“The commission’s logic incorrectly assumes that the WhatsApp Business API is a key distribution channel for these chatbots.”
Last month, Brazilian authorities filed a similar suit against WhatsApp Business, saying the new terms contained “potential anti-competitive practices.” reported.
This case was suspendedMeta saying its claims were “fundamentally false” and that “the emergence of AI chatbots on the WhatsApp commerce platform overloads our systems, which were not designed for this type of support.”