① The European Union announced a full antitrust investigation into Meta because of the artificial intelligence the company introduced into WhatsApp. (AI) features may harm competition; ② In March of this year, Meta integrated a chatbot into WhatsApp. Along with the virtual assistant Meta AI, it was launched in the European market.
On Thursday (December 4) local time, the European Union announced the launch of a full antitrust investigation into Meta, citing concerns that the artificial intelligence (AI) features introduced by the company in WhatsApp could harm competition.
In March of this year, Meta integrated a chatbot and virtual assistant, Meta AI, into WhatsApp and launched it in the European market.
The European Commission has expressed concern about WhatsApp's move to launch AI features, saying that Meta could prevent competitors from launching AI services through WhatsApp.
"We must ensure that European citizens and businesses fully benefit from this technological revolution and take action to prevent dominant digital giants from abusing their power and squeezing out innovative competitors," said Theresa Rivera, the EU's antitrust chief, in a statement on Thursday.
A WhatsApp spokesperson responded that the allegations were baseless, adding that the presence of chatbots on its platform "puts stress on our systems, which were not designed to support that stress."
“Nevertheless, the AI field is highly competitive, and people can access the services they want in a variety of ways, including app stores, search engines, email services, collaborative integrations, and operating systems,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said.
Meta must now come up with solutions to alleviate regulators' concerns.
Violation of EU antitrust regulations can result in fines of up to 10% of global annual revenue, but this limit is usually not reached, especially if the alleged misconduct is short-lived.
It's worth noting that Italian regulators also launched an investigation into Meta's introduction of AI features into WhatsApp in July of this year, and expanded the scope of the investigation in November. Italian regulators accused Meta of abusing its market dominance in the chatbot service sector.
The European Commission stated that the initiation of a formal investigation does not presuppose a final outcome. The EU also stated that, to avoid "overlapping" with Italy's ongoing procedures that could lead to provisional measures against Meta, its own investigation will exclude Italy.
As a leader in the social media field, Meta has been fined by the European Union multiple times.
In April of this year, Meta was fined €200 million ($234 million) for allegedly violating the Digital Markets Act; in November 2024, Meta was fined €798 million for abusing its market dominance by linking Facebook Marketplace to its social network.
(Article source: CLS)
