Italy has directed Meta to halt its policy preventing businesses from utilizing WhatsApp's business tools to provide their own AI chatbots on the messaging platform. The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) announced on Wednesday that its ongoing probe into whether Meta is exploiting its market dominance to promote its Meta AI chatbot within WhatsApp has provided sufficient grounds to mandate this suspension.

The Authority stated, "Meta’s conduct appears to constitute an abuse, since it may limit production, market access, or technical developments in the AI Chatbot services market, to the detriment of consumers." It further warned, "Moreover, while the investigation is ongoing, Meta’s conduct may cause serious and irreparable harm to competition in the affected market, undermining contestability."

This action follows the AGCM's expansion of an existing investigation into Meta last November, which came after the company revised its business API policy in October to prohibit general-purpose chatbots from being offered through the API. Meta has defended its position by stating that its API is not intended as a platform for chatbot distribution and that users have numerous other ways to access AI bots from different companies outside of WhatsApp.

Scheduled to take effect in January, this policy change would impact the availability of AI chatbots from providers such as OpenAI, Perplexity, and Poke on WhatsApp. Importantly, the restriction does not apply to businesses using AI for customer service on the platform. For example, a retailer operating an AI-powered support bot would still be permitted to use the API. The ban specifically targets the distribution of standalone AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude via the API.

Adding to the scrutiny, the European Commission initiated its own investigation this month into the new policy, expressing concerns that it could "prevent third-party AI providers from offering their services through WhatsApp in the European Economic Area (‘EEA’)." Meta has not yet issued a response to requests for comment on these developments.