Meta-owned chat app WhatsApp changed its business API policies this week, banning generic chatbots from its platform. The move is likely to impact WhatsApp-based assistants from companies such as OpenAI, Perplexity, Khosla Ventures-backed Luzia, and General Catalyst-backed Poke.
Focusing on general-purpose chatbots, the company has added a new section to its business API terminology that deals with “AI providers.” Under the terms, which will take effect on January 15, 2026, Meta says it will not allow AI model providers to distribute their AI assistants on WhatsApp.
Providers and developers of artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies, including without limitation large-scale language models, generative artificial intelligence platforms, general artificial intelligence assistants, or similar technologies as determined by Meta in its sole discretion (“AI Providers”) are strictly prohibited from accessing or using the WhatsApp Business Solutions for the purpose of providing, distributing, offering, selling, or otherwise making available the WhatsApp Business Solutions, whether directly or indirectly. Technology if such technology is a primary (rather than ancillary or auxiliary) feature of the enablement, as determined by Meta in its sole discretion.
Meta confirmed the move to TechCrunch and said the move does not affect companies that use AI to serve customers on WhatsApp. For example, a travel company running a bot for customer service will not be left without service.
The company’s rationale behind this move is that the WhatsApp Business API is designed for businesses serving customers, rather than serving as a platform for chatbot distribution. The company said it has built APIs for these use cases, but in recent months it has seen an unexpected use case for providing general-purpose chatbots.
“The purpose of the WhatsApp Business API is to enable businesses to provide customer support and send relevant updates. We are focused on supporting the tens of thousands of businesses that are building these experiences on WhatsApp,” a Meta spokesperson said in a comment to TechCrunch.
Meta said the new chatbot use case put a huge strain on its systems due to increased message volume and required a different type of support, which the company wasn’t ready for. The company prohibits use cases that fall outside of the API’s “intended design and strategic focus.”
The move effectively disables WhatsApp as a platform for distributing AI solutions like assistants and agents. This also means that Meta AI is the only assistant available in the chat app.
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Last year, OpenAI launched ChatGPT on WhatsApp, and earlier this year Perplexity launched its own bot on the chat app to leverage its user base of over 3 billion people. Both bots were able to answer queries, understand media files, answer questions about media files, reply to voice notes, and generate images. This could have generated a large number of messages.
But Meta had a bigger problem. WhatsApp’s Business API is one of the main ways chat apps make money. Bill companies based on various message templates such as marketing, utilities, authentication, support, and more. There was no provision for chatbots in this API design, so WhatsApp could not charge for chatbots.
During Meta’s Q1 2025 earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg pointed to business messaging as a huge revenue opportunity for the company.
“Right now, the majority of our business is advertising on our Facebook and Instagram feeds,” he said. “But WhatsApp now has over 3 billion monthly active users and is growing rapidly by over 100 million in the U.S. Messenger also has over 1 billion monthly users, and now just as many messages are sent daily on Instagram as on Messenger. Business messaging should be the next pillar of our business.”
