WhatsApp is used by roughly 3 billion people every month. For businesses, it has become the default channel for customer communication in large parts of Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. That reach made it extremely valuable for AI companies too. OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity all launched chatbots on WhatsApp, letting users ask questions and get answers in a familiar app they already had on their phones.
In October 2025, Meta changed the rules. It updated the terms for the WhatsApp Business service used by companies to communicate with customers, and blocked all third-party AI assistants from the platform. The change took full effect in January 2026. From that point, Meta's own AI was the only chatbot available on WhatsApp.
Three AI companies filed formal complaints with the European Commission: a California-based firm called The Interaction Company, French startup Agentik, and an unnamed Spanish rival. The Commission opened an antitrust investigation in December 2025 and issued formal charges two months later. Meta then tried to ease the pressure in March by allowing rivals back onto WhatsApp, but for a fee. The Commission rejected that offer in April, calling the price too high to be economically workable for competitors.
On June 9, the Commission issued an emergency order, one of the rarest tools in EU competition law. This is only the second time in 17 years the EU has used this power. The order gives Meta five working days to restore free access under the same terms that existed before October 2025. The order stays in place until the investigation concludes, or until June 2029 at the latest.
The logic behind the emergency move is worth understanding. Normal antitrust investigations in Europe take years. The Commission's position is that in AI, years may be too long. If one company controls the dominant messaging platform and blocks all competitors from it, the market can tip in that company's favor before any verdict is reached. The EU competition chief Teresa Ribera put it plainly: "In rapidly evolving markets, competition can be lost long before a final decision is adopted."
This matters beyond the specific case. WhatsApp is one of the primary channels through which businesses interact with customers at scale. If a business has built its customer service, order alerts, or sales process around a third-party AI tool that runs on WhatsApp, this ruling restores something that was taken away without warning. The broader lesson is that platform owners can change the rules at any time, and building critical customer-facing operations on top of one company's infrastructure carries real risk.
Meta argues the order forces large AI companies, including OpenAI, to use a paid product for free. The company says it will appeal. Non-compliance carries fines of up to 10 percent of Meta's global annual revenue, with additional daily penalties of up to 5 percent of average daily turnover if it continues to ignore the order.
For anyone running a business that uses WhatsApp to reach customers, the short-term answer is: the channel is open again for third-party AI tools. The medium-term question is whether to depend on it at all, given what happened between October 2025 and now.