Banning third party AI assistants but maintaining access to your own on one of the biggest messaging platforms in Europe will indeed get this kind of response, not really a surprise.
Doubt the result will be “using WhatsApp without a pointless ai assistant crammed in” though sadly
I bet they will roll this out in the whole EU now, nobody will make an AI chatbot because it's too expensive, Meta AI will still be featured prominently in the home screen and the EU will pat themselves on the back that they did something against Meta.
Actual link: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/home/en
Banning third party AI assistants but maintaining access to your own on one of the biggest messaging platforms in Europe will indeed get this kind of response, not really a surprise.
Doubt the result will be “using WhatsApp without a pointless ai assistant crammed in” though sadly
Don't worry, WhatsApp already has a loophole solution in Italy which is to charge AI chatbot makers for every message: https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/28/whatsapp-will-now-charge-a...
I bet they will roll this out in the whole EU now, nobody will make an AI chatbot because it's too expensive, Meta AI will still be featured prominently in the home screen and the EU will pat themselves on the back that they did something against Meta.
Actual link: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...
@dang can we replace this again?
Sure, we set it to https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_....