Italy and Brazil Order Meta to Suspend Its WhatsApp AI-Chatbot Ban as Antitrust Pressure on the Policy Goes Global
Competition regulators in Italy and Brazil have ordered Meta to suspend its policy barring rival AI chatbots from WhatsApp, widening a fight that began in the EU.
Overview
The regulatory fight over which AI assistants are allowed on WhatsApp has spread beyond Brussels. Competition authorities in Italy and Brazil have each ordered Meta to suspend the policy it adopted in October 2025 to bar third-party general-purpose AI chatbots from WhatsApp’s Business API — adding national enforcement actions to the European Union antitrust probe that The Machine Herald previously covered.
The orders target the same underlying change: Meta altered its WhatsApp Business API terms in October 2025 to prohibit companies whose primary service is AI from distributing chatbots through the app, with the restriction taking effect in January 2026, according to TechCrunch. After the change took effect, Meta’s own assistant, Meta AI, was the only general-purpose AI assistant left on the platform.
What We Know
Italy moved first. On December 24, 2025, the country’s competition authority, the AGCM, ordered Meta to suspend the policy, finding that “Meta’s conduct appears to constitute an abuse, since it may limit production, market access, or technical developments in the AI Chatbot services market, to the detriment of consumers,” as TechCrunch reported. Meta called the decision “fundamentally flawed,” arguing that “the route to market for AI companies are the app stores themselves, their websites and industry partnerships; not the WhatsApp Business Platform.”
Weeks later, Brazil followed. On January 13, 2026, the country’s competition watchdog, CADE, ordered WhatsApp to suspend the policy and opened its own investigation into whether the restriction is anti-competitive, according to TechCrunch. A Meta spokesperson responded that “the purpose of the WhatsApp Business API is to help businesses provide customer support and send relevant updates.”
Both national orders echo concerns the European Commission had already raised. The Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation on December 4, 2025, stating that Meta’s policy “prohibits AI providers from using a tool allowing businesses to communicate with customers via WhatsApp, the ‘WhatsApp Business Solution’, when AI is the primary service offered,” and that it was concerned the policy “may prevent third party AI providers from offering their services through WhatsApp in the European Economic Area (‘EEA’),” per the European Commission. EU Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera said the action was meant to ensure that “European citizens and businesses can benefit fully of this technological revolution,” Euronews reported.
In February 2026, the Commission warned it was, as Engadget reported, “considering quickly imposing interim measures on Meta, to preserve access for competitors to WhatsApp while the investigation is ongoing” and to keep the policy from “irreparably harming competition in Europe.” Under that pressure, Meta reversed the outright ban in early March 2026, instead allowing rival chatbots onto WhatsApp for a per-message fee ranging from €0.0490 to €0.1323 per “non-template message,” depending on the country, according to TechCrunch.
Why It Matters
The Italian and Brazilian orders show that the dispute is no longer confined to EU competition law. Two additional national regulators have independently concluded that the policy warrants suspension or investigation, exposing Meta to parallel proceedings in separate jurisdictions over the same conduct. The common thread across all three is the question of whether the operator of a dominant messaging platform can decide which AI assistants reach its users.
What We Don’t Know
It is not yet clear how Meta’s March fee framework interacts with the Italian and Brazilian orders, which were issued before that change and which addressed the original ban rather than the new pricing model. Whether either national authority will treat the fee-based access as compliance — or as a continuation of the conduct they ordered suspended — has not been resolved in the cited reporting. Meta has defended the policy on the grounds that AI providers have other routes to market and that chatbot traffic strained systems not designed for it, telling TechCrunch that “the emergence of AI chatbots on our Business API puts a strain on our systems that they were not designed to support.” The outcomes of the EU, Italian, and Brazilian proceedings all remain open.