The Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Cade) reported this Monday that it opened an administrative inquiry against companies in the Meta group to investigate suspicions of abuse of a dominant position.
According to a statement published by the agency, investigations showed possible anti-competitive conduct of an exclusionary nature resulting from the application of the new WhatsApp terms (“WhatsApp Business Solution Terms”) imposed by Meta to regulate the access and offering, by providers of artificial intelligence tools, of their technologies to the application’s users.
In view of this, Cade’s General Superintendence determined a preventive measure suspending the application of the new terms “until Cade can correctly assess all signs of infringement of the economic order identified”, said the statement.
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Following Cade’s announcement, a WhatsApp spokesperson stated that the allegations “are fundamentally flawed”, arguing that the emergence of AI chatbots on the WhatsApp Business platform puts a strain on its systems, which were not designed for this type of support.
“This logic assumes that WhatsApp would, in some way, be an app store. The appropriate channel for these AI companies to enter the market are the app stores themselves, their websites and industry partnerships, and not the WhatsApp Business platform,” said the spokesperson.
