Meta made a simple business decision in October 2025: rewrite the rules for its WhatsApp business interface to block general-purpose AI chatbots. The ban took effect on January 15, 2026. ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity were all removed. Meta AI stayed.
Meta's stated reason was that AI chatbots put too much strain on systems not designed for that kind of traffic. European regulators did not find that convincing. WhatsApp has over 3.3 billion monthly users globally, and in countries like Spain and Germany, more than 90% of the population uses it. It is not a niche product. Blocking a category of rival software from a platform that dominant, while promoting your own competing product inside the same platform, is the kind of conduct EU competition law was designed to address.
The European Commission opened a formal investigation in December 2025 and sent Meta a statement of objections in February 2026. Meta tried to resolve the issue in March by letting rivals back on, but with a fee attached. Brussels concluded that the fee had the same practical effect as the original ban: rivals could not operate at a scale that made commercial sense, so they effectively stayed out. The Commission then issued emergency interim measures on June 9, 2026, ordering Meta to restore the pre-October 2025 terms, which meant free access, immediately.
ChatGPT returned to WhatsApp in the European Economic Area on July 13. Users can reach it by messaging the verified contact 1-800-CHATGPT, with no account required. Text questions, image uploads, voice messages, and image generation all work across many languages. Those who want persistent history can link their ChatGPT account, but it is not necessary to get started.
The interim order stays in force until the full antitrust investigation concludes. That investigation is still open. If the Commission finds Meta guilty of abusing its dominant position, the fine can reach 10% of Meta's global annual revenue. Meta has already paid €798 million for a separate antitrust violation involving Facebook Marketplace and €200 million for a Digital Markets Act breach. Another penalty at that scale would be significant, though not fatal for a company of Meta's size.
What matters more than the fine is the precedent. This is one of the first times a competition authority has treated access to a major messaging platform as infrastructure that cannot be selectively closed to favor a platform owner's own AI product. The Commission's emergency powers, which are rarely used, were deployed here precisely because regulators argued that competition in AI can be lost before a final ruling is issued. Once a dominant platform controls which AI tools hundreds of millions of people use every day, it is very hard to reverse.
OpenAI is not relying on this ruling alone. Alongside the WhatsApp return in Europe, it is also launching ChatGPT on Kakao in South Korea and on Viber in other markets. The direction is clear: get into the apps people already use, rather than requiring them to adopt a separate one. That approach makes AI accessible to people who would never download a standalone AI app, and it increases the daily surface area for ChatGPT considerably.
For businesses operating in Europe that use WhatsApp as a customer communication channel, there is now a clearer principle at work. Platform owners cannot quietly restrict which AI tools run inside their platforms to favor their own. That protection exists now because regulators acted. Whether it holds, and whether it extends beyond Europe, depends on how the final ruling lands.