WhatsApp has allowed AI providers to continue offering chatbots to users with Brazilian phone numbers, days after the country’s competition regulator ordered the company to suspend a new policy that prohibits third-party generic chatbots from being offered on the app via its business API.
Under the new policy, the company will give developers and AI providers a 90-day grace period starting January 15 to stop responding to user queries on the chat app and notify users that their chatbots will no longer work on WhatsApp.
According to a notice to AI providers seen by TechCrunch, Meta told developers that they do not need to notify users with Brazilian phone numbers (code +55) of the change or stop providing services.
“The requirements to stop responding to user queries and implement a pre-approved autoresponder language (described below) by January 15, 2026 will no longer apply when sending messages to people with the Brazil country code (+55),” the notice reads.
WhatsApp did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation of this decision.
This policy, which goes into effect today, affects general-purpose chatbots such as ChatGPT and Grok on the platform. In particular, this policy does not prevent businesses from providing customer service to their customers via bots within WhatsApp.
Brazil’s competition authority said in a notice that it will investigate whether Meta’s terms exclude competitors and unfairly favor Meta AI, the company’s chatbot on WhatsApp.
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Meta previously offered a similar exemption to Italian users after the country’s competition authorities took issue with the policy in December. Separately, the EU has also launched an antitrust investigation into the new rules.
The company has consistently argued that AI chatbots are taxing systems designed for various uses of business APIs. Meta has even said in the past that people who want to use a different chatbot can do so outside of WhatsApp.
“These claims are fundamentally flawed,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said Tuesday in response to CADE’s investigation. “The emergence of AI chatbots in our business APIs has put a strain on systems that were not designed to support them. This logic assumes that WhatsApp is somehow a de facto app store. The route to market for AI companies is the app store itself, websites, and industry partnerships, not the WhatsApp Business Platform.”
