Meta seems intent on maintaining its monopoly in the AI chatbot arena on WhatsApp. Ever since the launch of Meta AI, the company has been adding AI features prominently on WhatsApp and other social media platforms it owns without any “kill switch” for users who do not want to interact with them.
The company also announced earlier this month that it will use conversations with Meta AI to show ads to users across its different platforms.
In a fresh update, Meta has quietly changed its business API policy on WhatsApp to ban general-purpose AI chatbots on the personal messaging giant. The new policy was published on October 18 and will come into effect from January 15, 2026.
The move will mean that third-party AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Luzia, and Poke, which have launched their chatbots on WhatsApp, will have to shut down their operations on the platform.
“Providers and developers of artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies, including but not limited to large language models, generative artificial intelligence platforms, general-purpose artificial intelligence assistants, or similar technologies as determined by Meta in its sole discretion (“AI Providers”), are strictly prohibited from accessing or using the WhatsApp Business Solution, whether directly or indirectly, for the purposes of providing, delivering, offering, selling, or otherwise making available such technologies when such technologies are the primary (rather than incidental or ancillary) functionality being made available for use, as determined by Meta in its sole discretion,” the updated WhatsApp business API policy reads.
Meta also noted that this new policy will not affect businesses using AI for customer service—say, e-commerce platforms, banks, travel companies, and healthcare providers.
A Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch that the AI chatbots placed a lot of burden on its system and led to increased message volume, requiring a different kind of support that it is not yet ready for.
While Meta is citing the additional load on its servers as the reason for the move, the rivalry in the field of artificial intelligence has not been hidden from the public eye. Earlier this year, Meta had set up its Superintelligence Labs, poaching a lot of top talent from OpenAI, among other AI companies. Most of the AI Labs are in a race to achieve Superintelligence—a hypothetical stage in the development of AI where it can perform most tasks as well as humans, or perhaps even better.
