By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS, June 9 (Reuters) - EU antitrust regulators on Tuesday ordered Meta Platforms to give rival AI chatbots free access to WhatsApp while they continue to investigate whether the company abused its market power by blocking competitors from the messaging app.
The European Commission's decision to issue an interim measure against Meta - its first in 17 years - followed complaints from The Interaction Company of California, developer of the Poke.com AI assistant, French AI startup
Agentik and a Spanish rival.
Those complaints prompted the Commission, the EU's competition enforcer, to open an investigation in December last year. It issued charges against Meta two months later, alleging breaches of EU antitrust rules.
"In rapidly evolving markets, competition can be lost long before a final decision is adopted," EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said in a statement.
"These interim measures will safeguard competition in the growing market for AI assistants, by preserving a key entry point to reach consumers in Europe – WhatsApp – and allowing AI companies to innovate, scale up and reach their full potential," she said.
Meta criticised the Commission order.
"The European Commission has decided that OpenAI and some of the largest companies in the world can use the paid-for WhatsApp Business product for free," a Meta spokesperson said in an email.
"This is regulatory overreach subsidised by the many European companies that pay. We will appeal."
Meta barred rival AI services from accessing its WhatsApp for Business application programming interface, which allows companies to connect their systems to WhatsApp, in October last year, while exempting its own assistant Meta AI. In March it allowed the competitors back onto the platform for a fee, a move that drew the Commission's objection.
Under the interim measure, Meta must restore rivals' access to the WhatsApp for Business API on the same terms and conditions that applied before October, within five working days.
Meta faces a fine of up to 10% of its global annual turnover if found to have breached EU antitrust rules.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Mark Potter/Sudip Kar-Gupta)
