Khaberni - The European Commission threatened on Wednesday to impose temporary measures on Meta, the owner of the WhatsApp application, in a dispute concerning alleged violations of the European Union's competition law.
The Commission is investigating the company after it announced last year that it would restrict access for competing artificial intelligence providers to the WhatsApp chat service.
The Commission noted that "Meta" later said it would restore access, but only if competing artificial intelligence providers paid a fee.
For her part, the Vice President of the European Commission, Teresa Ribera, said: "Replacing the legal ban with pricing that leads to the same outcome does not change our preliminary assessment that Meta's behavior seems to be an abusive exploitation of its dominant position, and may seriously harm competition in the artificial intelligence assistant market."
The interim measures, if implemented, aim to restore full access for competing artificial intelligence assistants to WhatsApp until we fully analyze the case, according to the European Union's competition official.
She added: "Excluding competitors in fast-evolving markets like artificial intelligence is exactly the kind of behavior that interim measures are intended to deal with."
Meta now has the opportunity to respond to the Commission's assessment and propose concessions to avoid the imposition of these measures.
