Brussels (Belgium) (AFP) – The EU ordered Meta on Tuesday to give rival AI chatbots access to its WhatsApp platform for free within five working days as it carries out an antitrust probe, or risk a heavy fine. Meta said it would appeal the order, which follows the launch in December of an EU investigation into the US firm’s policy of blocking access for AI providers other than Meta AI.
The European Commission, the EU’s digital watchdog, said Meta will have to maintain access to competitors until Brussels wraps up its probe. “Today, we require Meta to restore access to WhatsApp for competing AI assistants while we investigate whether the restrictions may infringe EU competition rules,” EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said in a statement. “This will prevent serious and irreparable harm to competition in this growing market by Meta’s conduct, which at first sight infringes EU competition rules,” the commission said.
A Meta spokesperson said the measure would allow “OpenAI and some of the largest companies in the world” access for free, adding: “This is regulatory overreach subsidised by the many European companies that pay”. The EU had warned Meta it faced interim measures if it did not open WhatsApp to rival AI assistants in February. The company then introduced an access fee — a remedy the EU rejected in April as unsatisfactory. Traditional antitrust probes can take years and European officials believe the decisions, often fines, come too late to see any positive change to address the harm already done.
The last time the EU used such interim measures was in 2019, Ribera said. The EU’s goal is that Meta reinstates third-party AI assistants’ access to WhatsApp under the same conditions as before its October 2025 policy change when it “effectively” barred them. The commission said it has the power to impose a fine of up to 10 percent of the company’s total turnover in the business year preceding the infringement if Meta “either intentionally or negligently” contravenes the decision on interim measures.
Brussels said the fee offered earlier this year “at first sight” was “in practice equivalent to the previous access ban”. The commission described an “urgent need” to protect a “growing market for general-purpose AI assistants” and give space for smaller players and new entrants to challenge large incumbents. “We cannot let large digital incumbents leverage their dominance of the past to dictate who in Europe gets to compete and who gets to innovate in AI,” Ribera told a press conference in Brussels.
She said the EU order would ensure EU citizens choose which AI chatbots they would prefer to use on WhatsApp. There is no legal deadline for the EU’s investigation to end. The commission has had several run-ins with Meta as part of a broader clampdown on abusive Big Tech practices. In April, EU regulators found Meta was failing to keep under-13s off its Facebook and Instagram platforms in breach of the bloc’s digital content rules.
As part of that same probe, EU regulators are looking into how Meta protects users’ physical and mental wellbeing, as well as the “addictive” design of Facebook and Instagram. Meta has also appealed a 200 million euro ($231 million) fine imposed last year by the EU under the online competition law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA is not popular across the Atlantic, with neither the US administration under President Donald Trump nor the American giants themselves. Apple criticised the law on Monday when it blamed the DMA for its delayed rollout of the AI-enhanced voice assistant Siri, which the EU flatly rejected.
© 2024 AFP
