Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has said it will not apply its ban on third party AI chatbots to WhatsApp users in Italy. The decision follows an interim order from the country’s antitrust authority, which asked the company to pause the restriction while a full investigation is carried out.
According to a notice sent to developers last week and cited by a news agency, Meta has complied with the order. Phone numbers with the Italian country code plus thirty nine are now exempt from WhatsApp’s updated terms of service. Under the new rules, which take effect on January fifteen, WhatsApp will stop AI companies from using its business platform if AI is their main product.
The exemption comes after the Italian watchdog directed Meta to suspend the ban within the country, pending a detailed review of possible market abuse. At the same time, the European Commission has also started a formal antitrust probe into the same policy, though it has not issued a similar temporary order.
“Meta’s move to keep enforcing its new WhatsApp API policy shutting out AI rivals like Poke dot com while only carving out plus thirty nine numbers is deeply disappointing,” said Marvin von Hagen, co founder and chief executive of The Interaction Company of California.
The policy change was first announced in October twenty twenty five and paved the way for Meta’s own assistant, Meta AI, to gain a stronger presence on the platform. Meanwhile, OpenAI has said its ChatGPT service, which has reached fifty million WhatsApp users, will shut down by the January deadline. Microsoft has also confirmed that it will remove Copilot from WhatsApp.
Meta has defended its decision, calling the regulatory probes “baseless”. The company said the growing number of third party AI chatbots puts pressure on systems that were not designed to support them. It added that businesses can still use AI for secondary services such as automated customer support, but not as their main offering.
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