European Union antitrust regulators ordered this Tuesday (9) that Meta allow free access to artificial intelligence chatbots competing with WhatsApp, while they continue to investigate whether the company abused its dominant position by blocking rivals in the messaging app. The European Commission's decision to impose a provisional measure against Meta — the first of its kind in 17 years — followed complaints from the American company The Interaction Company, developer of the AI ​​assistant Poke.com, the French startup Agentik and a Spanish competitor. The complaints led the Commission, responsible for protecting competition in the EU, to open an investigation in December last year. Two months later, the body filed formal charges against Meta, alleging violations of the bloc's antitrust rules. “In rapidly evolving markets, competition can be lost long before a final decision is adopted,” EU competition chief Teresa Ribera said in a statement. According to her, the provisional measures will protect competition in the growing AI assistant market by preserving an important channel for reaching consumers in Europe: WhatsApp. “AI companies will be able to innovate, grow and reach their full potential,” he said. Meta criticized the European Commission's decision. “The European Commission has decided that OpenAI and some of the largest companies in the world can use the paid product WhatsApp Business for free,” said a company spokesperson via email. "This is a regulatory excess subsidized by the many European companies that pay for the service. We will appeal." In October last year, Meta blocked rival AI services from accessing the WhatsApp Business programming interface (API), a tool that allows the integration of business systems into the messaging application. The exception was the company's own assistant, Meta AI. In March, the company once again allowed competitors access, but for a fee — a measure that generated objections from the European Commission. According to the provisional determination, Meta must restore, within five business days, rivals' access to the WhatsApp Business API under the same conditions in force before October. If found guilty of breaking European Union antitrust rules, Meta could be fined up to 10% of its annual global turnover.