The American multinational Meta You will have to return within the next five days free, although temporary, access to WhatsApp to rival companies in the development of assistants powered with artificial intelligence, the European Commission announced this Tuesday, within the framework of an investigation for abuse of dominant position.
“Until January of this year, Meta allowed AI to interact with WhatsApp usersjust as it does with other companies”, explained the executive vice president of the Commission in charge of Competition, Teresa Ribera. In practice, users they could interact with any AI assistant, such as ChatGPT or Perplexity.
In October, the multinational changed its policy expelling its competitors from the messaging platform. Two months later, the Commission launched an investigation when it understood that this policy could lead to an abuse of dominant position. Meta restored access, but in exchange for a fee.
“The problem is that this rate is so high that, in practice, It is not economically viable for the competition“explained Ribera. “The result, in practice, is that The block on access to WhatsApp remains“he added, also denouncing that Meta has not convincingly justified the reason behind this policy.
Ribera has argued that Meta takes advantage of WhatsApp’s dominance for the benefit of the development and implementation of its own AI tool, compared to that of its rivals. “It is a critical moment,” said the vice president, “we cannot allow the large dominant digital companies take advantage of their historical dominance to dictate who in Europe can compete and who can innovate in AI.”
Precautionary and exceptional measures
With its decision this Tuesday, the Executive obliges through precautionary measures to the multinational restore access for your competitors completely free until the investigations are completed, by 2029 at the latest. The Commission considers that these measures are necessary to prevent the Meta strategy from “causing serious and irreparable harm to competition in this expanding market.
Ribera has recognized that The Commission does not take these types of measures lightly. The last time Brussels imposed precautionary measures was in 2019. “When damage can occur quickly and there is a risk that companies are forced to abandon the market, we must act,” said the Spaniard.
The EU, at the tail end of the development of artificial intelligence models, is looking for a way to avoid being nominated. “We have learned our lesson,” said Riberawhich has denounced that the lack of action by the authorities in certain technological markets has made competition impossible. “That is precisely what we want to avoid. We cannot allow this to happen in the field of AI,” he added, “there is too much at stake.”
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