Meta Platforms will exclude Italy from its planned ban on rival artificial intelligence chatbots on WhatsApp, following an order from the country’s competition authority, according to a notice sent to AI providers and developers and seen by Reuters.
Italy’s antitrust watchdog, the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM), ordered Meta last month to suspend the proposed ban while it investigates the company for suspected abuse of market power, after complaints from competing AI providers. The measure applies as an interim step during the ongoing investigation.
Under the revised approach, Meta said that phone numbers with an Italian country code are currently exempt from WhatsApp’s updated terms of service, which are scheduled to take effect on January 15. The exemption is intended to ensure compliance with the Italian authority’s order.
The European Commission is also examining whether Meta abused its dominant position by restricting rival AI chatbots’ access to WhatsApp. However, unlike the Italian regulator, the Commission has not issued interim measures at this stage.
The proposed restriction would prevent third-party AI providers from operating chatbots on WhatsApp, a move that critics argue could strengthen Meta’s own AI offerings, including Meta AI, which was integrated into the messaging platform last year.
Meta declined to comment specifically on the updated terms of service and referred instead to a statement issued late last year, in which the company said the rapid emergence of AI chatbots had placed strain on systems that were not originally designed to support such uses. The Italian antitrust authority also declined to comment.
The Interaction Company of California, which develops the AI assistant Poke.com and has lodged complaints with both Italian and EU competition authorities, criticised Meta’s decision to limit the exemption to Italy.
“Meta’s move to keep enforcing its new WhatsApp API policy — shutting out AI rivals like Poke.com while only carving out +39 numbers — is deeply disappointing,” Marvin von Hagen, co-founder and chief executive of The Interaction Company of California, told Reuters.
He added that the Italian authority had already found, on a preliminary basis, that Meta’s conduct could be anti-competitive under EU law. “Meta should have suspended the policy worldwide, not just in Italy. The European Commission must urgently follow Italy’s lead and adopt interim measures,” he said.