As AI competition intensifies, regulators are increasingly confronting a familiar antitrust question in a new setting: when does market power enable a platform to disadvantage downstream rivals? This question is at the center of the European Commission’s investigation into Meta’s policy governing AI assistants’ access to WhatsApp. The investigation focuses on Meta’s decision to restrict third-party AI assistants’ access to WhatsApp while continuing to offer their own product, Meta AI. Given WhatsApp’s dominant position in the European market, regulators are examining whether this restriction could impair competition and limit consumer access to third-party AI assistants through an important distribution channel.
Background
On December 4, 2025, the European Commission (‘the Commission’) opened a formal antitrust investigation to determine whether Meta’s new policy on artificial intelligence (AI) providers’ access to WhatsApp breached EU competition rules. Meta’s policy, announced on October 15, 2025, prohibits AI providers from using the WhatsApp Business Solution tool to communicate with customers if AI is the primary service offered. In a December 3, 2025, press release, the Commission asserted that “competing AI providers may be blocked from reaching their customers through WhatsApp. On the other hand, Meta’s own AI service ‘Meta AI’ would remain accessible to users on the platform.” Meta explained their rationale behind the new policy in a comment to TechCrunch, sharing that “[t]he emergence of AI chatbots on our Business API puts a strain on our systems that they were not designed to support,” and that “the AI space is highly competitive and people have access to the services of their choice in any number of ways, including app stores, search engines, email services, partnership integrations, and operating systems.”
Following a preliminary review, the Commission sent a Statement of Objections to Meta on February 8, 2026, informing the company of their plans to impose interim measures to prevent the WhatsApp policy change. To preempt interim regulation, Meta announced an update to the policy on March 4, 2026, allowing AI assistants on WhatsApp for a year. However, these rival chatbots would be required to pay a fee to access WhatsApp, ranging from €0.0490 to €0.1323 per non-template message depending on the country. These changes did not alleviate the Commission’s concerns. On April 14, 2026, the Commission issued a Supplementary Statement of Objections informing Meta of its intent to order the company to reinstate AI providers’ access to WhatsApp under the same conditions as before the policy change on October 15.
In announcing the Commission’s pursuit of interim measures, Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, stated: “Pushing out competitors in fast-evolving markets like AI is exactly the type of conduct that interim measures are designed to address. Replacing the legal ban with pricing that has a similar effect does not change our preliminary view that Meta’s conduct appears to be an abuse of its dominant position, that may seriously harm competition on the market for AI assistants. This is why we continue our proceedings towards interim measures, which would reinstate full access for rival AI assistants to WhatsApp until we have analysed the matter in full.”
As discussions with regulators continued, Meta announced on May 12, 2026, that they will be temporarily giving rival AI chatbots free access to WhatsApp for one month. That access has now been extended as the Commission imposed interim measures on June 8, 2026, ordering Meta to “re-instate access for third-party general-purpose AI assistants to the WhatsApp for Business API under the same terms and conditions that were in place before 15 October 2025.” Although a final decision from the Commission is still pending, Teresa Ribera offered additional insight into the rationale behind the interim measures, noting that “[i]n rapidly evolving markets, competition can be lost long before a final decision is adopted.”
Key Antitrust Questions Raised
The Commission’s investigation centers on a familiar antitrust concern: whether a dominant platform can use its position to favor its own products at the expense of rivals. The question is whether Meta’s policy allows Meta AI to continue benefiting from distribution through WhatsApp while making it more difficult for competing AI assistants to reach users through the same channel. If so, the conduct could impair competition by reducing rivals’ ability to attract users, scale their services, and compete effectively against Meta’s own AI offering.
This type of exclusionary conduct may be particularly harmful if the dominant platform forecloses competitors from a significant distribution channel. Meta has emphasized that competing AI assistants remain available through many alternative channels, including app stores, search engines, operating systems, and websites. The Commission, however, appears concerned that WhatsApp may represent a sufficiently important distribution channel that restrictions on access could meaningfully reduce competition in the market. In their words, WhatsApp is “an important entry point to enable general-purpose AI assistants [to] reach consumers.”
In many respects these issues are not new. Competition authorities have often scrutinized situations where firms controlling critical platforms allegedly used their market dominance to advantage their own products at the expense of rivals. Microsoft’s integration of Internet Explorer with Windows raised concerns that control over a dominant operating system could be used to disadvantage competing browsers. More recently, regulators have considered whether app stores can favor their own services or impose restrictions that disadvantage third-party apps. While the technologies have evolved, the underlying economic questions have remained quite similar. With the European Commission’s investigation of WhatsApp, these antitrust issues are now being tested in the AI ecosystem. As AI assistants become increasingly integrated into existing platforms, access to the distribution channels through which users engage with these models may become a critical competitive advantage. As such, the outcome of the Commission’s investigation may ultimately help shape how antitrust authorities apply theories of self-preferencing and foreclosure in this new space.
Author Backgrounds:
Eugene Kiselev is a Director at Coherent Economics. Eugene is an expert in regulatory economics, antitrust analysis, and econometric modeling, and has over a decade of experience analyzing complex issues at the intersection of the telecommunications, media, consumer electronics, and information technology industries.
Amanda Ofulue is a Research Analyst at Coherent Economics. Amanda earned her M.S. in Economics and Quantitative Analysis from DePaul University, following a B.A. in Business Economics from Brown University. As a graduate student, Amanda performed research in labor economics, health economics, and antitrust.
The views and opinions expressed in this content are solely those of the authors, do not necessarily reflect the views of the firm, and should not be construed as professional advice.