Microsoft’s AI chatbot Copilot will no longer be available on WhatsApp after January 15, the company has announced. After that date, WhatsApp users will no longer be able to chat with AI unless they switch to Microsoft’s own Copilot mobile app or use a chatbot over the web.
The company said it was removing Copilot from its popular messaging app to comply with WhatsApp’s revised platform policies announced last month.
At the time, the Meta-owned Messenger said it would no longer support general-purpose AI chatbots that use the WhatsApp Business API to serve customers. Instead, they wanted to free up those resources for other types of business. This change does not mean that companies can no longer use AI to serve their customers. However, it will end WhatsApp as an AI chatbot distribution channel, impacting companies like Microsoft, OpenAI, and Perplexity.
OpenAI had already announced plans to scale back its integration with WhatsApp in January.
Unfortunately for Copilot users on WhatsApp, access to WhatsApp’s chatbot was unauthenticated and chat history will not be saved when migrated to Microsoft’s platform. Microsoft is encouraging users who need to save their conversations for future reference to export them using WhatsApp’s built-in tools before the January 15 deadline.
