The EU's executive arm has given Meta a hard five-day deadline to let competing AI assistants back onto WhatsApp.
The European Commission issued interim measures requiring Meta to restore "free access to WhatsApp for rival general purpose AI assistants." Regulators framed the order as urgent: without action, they said, the situation risked causing "serious and irreparable damage to competition" in the AI assistant market. Meta acknowledged the order and said it would appeal.
The use of interim measures is the important detail here. The Commission invokes them when it believes a full investigation would take too long to prevent harm already underway. The AI assistant market is early enough that distribution on a platform this large could determine which products survive to compete at all.
Meta appealing is almost certain to stretch the timeline past five working days. The company has a consistent pattern of contesting EU digital market orders while continuing challenged practices, delaying actual compliance by months. Interim orders are designed to cut through that delay, but enforcement still depends on the Commission following through if Meta ignores the deadline.