OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot are each leaving WhatsApp thanks to imminent adjustments to the messaging app’s phrases of service that can prohibit utilizing it to distribute AI chatbots not made by Meta.
OpenAI introduced its deliberate departure just a few 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 mentioned 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 assist chatbots, with the phrases solely prohibiting instances the place the AI itself is the product — a easy means 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 assist and ship related updates,” an nameless Meta spokesperson instructed TechCrunch on the time. “Our focus is on supporting the tens of 1000’s of companies who’re constructing these experiences on WhatsApp.”
The change implies that different third-party AI chatbots, together with Perplexity, are prone to announce departures from WhatsApp quickly, leaving Meta AI the one possibility obtainable from subsequent January.
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