By Samuel Stolton, Bloomberg
Meta Platforms Inc. has been threatened with an interim European Union ban on policies that allegedly block rival AI firms from operating on WhatsApp, unless the tech giant offers fixes that appease the bloc’s concerns.
In a so-called supplementary statement of objections, the European Commission said on Wednesday it intends to “impose interim measures to prevent these policy changes from causing serious and irreparable harm on the market, subject to Meta’s reply and rights of defence.”
The move comes after policies were earlier introduced by Meta that complainants say may unfairly prevent rival AI providers from offering their business services through WhatsApp.
“The European Commission is proposing to use its regulatory powers to enable some of the largest companies in the world to use the paid-for WhatsApp Business product for free,” a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “This means that a small bakery in France paying to use the service to take croissant orders will be picking up the tab for OpenAI. Small European businesses shouldn’t foot OpenAI’s bill.”
Under EU rules, competition regulators can order companies to temporarily stop suspect business practices, but these demands can be challenged in the bloc’s courts in Luxembourg. Eventual fines for breaching the EU antitrust rulebook can be as high as 10% of global annual revenue, although they rarely reach that level, especially if alleged wrongdoing is short-lived.
Italian regulators were the first to examine alleged competitive distortions arising from the AI policies of WhatsApp over its alleged abuse of a dominant market position in its chatbot services. The Italian antitrust agency earlier said it was working with its EU counterparts on the issue. The Brussels-based commission said Wednesday it had expanded its probe to cover Italy too, which had earlier been carved out of the investigation while the Rome regulator had been examining the issue.
(Adds Meta’s reaction in 4th paragraph)
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