The Italian Antitrust Authority said Wednesday that it has ordered social-media giant Meta to suspend terms that exclude its competitors in the AI Chatbot services market from the WhatsApp platform.
    It said the move was related to an ongoing investigation into the possible abuse of a dominant market position regarding the company's integration of the Meta AI service into WhatsApp.
    "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," the competition authority said.
    "Moreover, while the investigation is ongoing, Meta's conduct may cause serious and irreparable harm to competition in the affected market, undermining contestability".
    A Meta spokesperson said the company will appeal.
    "The Authority's decision is groundless," the spokesperson said.
    "The emergence of artificial intelligence chatbots on our Business APIs has put pressure on our systems that were not designed to support this type of usage.

"The Italian Authority assumes that WhatsApp is, in some sense, an app store.

The channels for AI companies to market their goods are the app stores, their websites and industry partnerships, not the WhatsApp Business platform".
   

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA