Meta wants to win the AI ​​race by kicking competitors off its platforms

The Meta company has just announced that the Microsoft CoPilot and ChatGPT chatbots will not be able to continue working in the WhatsApp messenger and will stop working on January 15, 2026. It seems that this action was done by Meta with the aim of putting pressure on the competitors.

According to Von Arena, Kopilot and ChatGPT announced that they will leave this platform due to changes in the terms of use of WhatsApp. The move comes after Meta announced that AI companies will no longer be able to use the WhatsApp Business API as a distribution platform for chatbots.

Meta does not allow the activities of competitors on WhatsApp

Microsoft Copilot users can’t save their WhatsApp chats, but OpenAI allows ChatGPT users to connect their accounts and transfer their conversations.

Of course, the ban announced by Meta does not include companies that use artificial intelligence for customer support services. The new Meta Terms specifically address cases where an AI chatbot is a product itself, not a tool to provide another service. This Meta plan appears to be directly aimed at cutting off the access of Meta AI competitors to WhatsApp users around the world.

Also, these new rules do not only affect Microsoft and OpenAI products, and other AI companies, including Perplexity, which integrated their models with WhatsApp, will soon be forced to leave the platform.

It’s understandable that Meta would want to cut off rival companies’ access to WhatsApp users around the world, especially since WhatsApp has over 3 billion users in over 180 countries. But this company’s exclusive chatbot, Meta AI, is not one of the best chatbots on the market and has major weaknesses compared to its competitors. For this reason, it seems that none of the leading companies in the field of artificial intelligence are worried about leaving WhatsApp.