The European Union (EU) warned that Meta's plan to charge an expense for competitors' artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots to access WhatsApp could violate antitrust rules.
On the 15th (local time), EU Vice President Teresa Ribera said, "Replacing a legal ban with pricing policy could amount to an abuse of dominant position," and "could seriously hinder competition in the AI assistant market."
Earlier, after the EU determined that Meta had effectively blocked competitors' AI chatbots from accessing WhatsApp, Meta proposed, as a remedy, allowing access on the condition of a fee.
However, the EU also sees this approach as potentially producing anti-competitive effects. WhatsApp's share in Europe's smartphone messenger market is known to exceed 90%.
The European Commission plans to order Meta, as an interim measure until the final findings are issued, to restore competitors' AI chatbots' access to WhatsApp.
In Oct. last year, Meta revised WhatsApp's API terms of use to restrict the operation of services by external AI firms. An API is an interface that allows external developers to use platform functions.
If violations are confirmed in the EU investigation, Meta could face a penalty surcharge. In Apr. last year, Meta was also hit with a €200 million penalty surcharge for violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA).