The city of Brussels is planning a new antitrust investigation into Metaplatform over the rollout of artificial intelligence features on WhatsApp, an official told Reuters on Thursday. This reflects increased scrutiny of Big Tech’s use of generative AI.
The move, first reported by the Financial Times, marks the latest action by European regulators against big technology companies, as the European Union seeks to balance support for the sector with efforts to curb its growing influence.
“Unsubstantiated claim”
The European Commission is expected to launch an investigation as early as Thursday into how the California-based company integrated its MetaAI system into its messaging service earlier this year, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The European Commission declined to comment.
“The claims are baseless,” a WhatsApp spokesperson told Reuters in a statement, adding that the emergence of chatbots on the company’s platform is “straining systems that were not designed to support them.”
“Still, the AI space is highly competitive, and people have many ways to access their preferred services, including app stores, search engines, email services, partnership integrations, and operating systems.”
Meta AI, a chatbot and virtual assistant, has been integrated into the WhatsApp interface across European markets since March 2025.
antitrust rules
Italy’s antitrust watchdog launched a parallel investigation in July into allegations that Meta used its market power by integrating AI tools into WhatsApp. The investigation expanded in November to investigate whether Meta further abused its dominance by blocking competing AI chatbots from its messaging platform.
The EU investigation will be conducted under traditional antitrust laws, rather than the EU’s landmark Digital Markets Act, which is currently used to scrutinize Amazon and Microsoft’s cloud services for potential regulation, the FT reported, citing officials.
(Information provided by Reuters)
