Agencies
The European Union urged Meta Platforms on Monday to grant rival chatbots access to WhatsApp after an antitrust probe found the U.S. giant to be in breach of the bloc’s competition rules.
The European Commission stated a alter in Meta’s terms had “effectively” barred third-party artificial ininformigence assistants from connecting to customers via the messaging platform since January.
Competition chief Teresa Ribera stated the EU was “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.” The EU executive, which is in charge of competition policy, sent Meta a warning known as a “statement of objections,” a formal step in antitrust probes.
Meta now has a chance to reply and deffinish itself. Monday’s step does not prejudge the outcome of the probe, the commission stated.
The tech giant rejected the commission’s preliminaryfindings.
“There are many AI options and people can utilize them from app stores, operating systems, devices, websites, and industest partnerships. The commission’s logic incorrectly assumes the WhatsApp Business API is a key distribution channel for these chatbots,” the spokesperson stated.
Opened in December, the EU probe marks the latest attempt by the 27-nation bloc to rein in Big Tech, many of whom are based in the US, in the face of strong pushback by the government of US President Donald Trump.
The investigation covers the European Economic Area (EEA), created up of the bloc’s 27 states, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, with the exception of Italy, which opened a separate investigation into Meta in July.
The commission stated that Meta is “likely to be dominant” in the EEA for consumer messaging apps, notably through WhatsApp, and accutilized Meta of “abapplying this dominant position by refapplying access” tocompetitors.
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