Meta has temporarily reversed course after the EU said suggested new rules were ‘equivalent to the previous access ban’.
Meta will allow rival AI chatbots free access to WhatsApp for a month as it navigates a way out of EU antitrust concerns.
The decision comes after the European Commission said last month that it would have to order Meta to reinstate third-party AI assistant access to WhatsApp under preexisting conditions.
Last October, the social media giant changed its rules and blocked competing third-party AI providers from reaching their customers through WhatsApp.
Following this, in December, the EU opened its probe into Meta’s policies and informed the company by February that it was breaching the bloc’s antitrust laws.
Later in March, the company reversed course to reinstate access to WhatsApp for third-party AI assistants – but for a fee. However, in April, the Commission told Meta that its new rules were “equivalent to the previous access ban”.
A Meta spokesperson told news publications that general-purpose AI chatbots operating in the European Economic Area (EEA) will be given “free access to the WhatsApp business API for one month” as part of ongoing discussions with the EU.
“This will provide the Commission and Meta with time to achieve a quick and fair outcome to the investigation,” they added. SiliconRepublic.com has reached out to Meta for further comments.
The Commission’s investigation previously covered all of the EEA apart from Italy, to avoid an overlap with the Italian competition authority’s ongoing investigations into the company over the same issue. However, the Commission said last month that its findings “will now cover the whole of the EEA”.
The EU welcomed Meta’s move to open up access to WhatsApp, telling the press that it believes this creates the “adequate conditions to discuss commitments” with the company.
“The window for this discussion is short, and the process is conditional on Meta’s genuine intention to address the Commission’s concerns,” it added.
Meta is on the hook for up to 10pc of its annual global turnover if the EU ultimately finds that it broke antitrust laws under the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the EEA Agreement.
The company has faced an onslaught of legal issues in the past few months, with Ireland’s Coimisiún na Meán launching two investigations into Meta earlier this month over its recommender systems and compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Meanwhile, in April, the EU – in a separate investigation – preliminarily found that Instagram and Facebook breached the DSA for failing to “diligently” identify and mitigate risks that children under 13 face when using these platforms.
In March, a landmark US legal case found that Meta’s platforms were designed to be addictive to children, while a different case that concluded a day prior found that Meta’s platforms enable child sexual exploitation.
The Facebook parent also launched a legal battle against UK media regulator Ofcom earlier this month over allegedly “disproportionate” penalties introduced in the Online Safety Act.
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