OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot are each leaving WhatsApp thanks to imminent adjustments to the messaging app’s phrases of service that may prohibit utilizing it to distribute AI chatbots not made by Meta.
OpenAI introduced its deliberate departure a number of weeks in the past, with Microsoft following it this week. Each firms attributed the departures to Meta’s new phrases of service for WhatsApp Enterprise Answer, which come into impact on January fifteenth, 2026, and stated the chatbots will stay accessible in WhatsApp till that date. ChatGPT customers can hyperlink their accounts to WhatsApp to ensure their chat historical past carries over, although Copilot customers received’t have that possibility.
WhatsApp introduced the replace to its phrases in October, banning AI firms from utilizing its enterprise API as a distribution platform for chatbots. Different firms will nonetheless be permitted to make use of WhatsApp for customer support or help chatbots, with the phrases solely prohibiting circumstances the place the AI itself is the product — a easy method of stopping Meta’s AI rivals utilizing its personal platform to achieve clients.
“The aim of the WhatsApp Enterprise API is to assist companies present buyer help and ship related updates,” an nameless Meta spokesperson advised TechCrunch on the time. “Our focus is on supporting the tens of hundreds of companies who’re constructing these experiences on WhatsApp.”
The change implies that different third-party AI chatbots, together with Perplexity, are more likely to announce departures from WhatsApp quickly, leaving Meta AI the one possibility out there from subsequent January.
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