WhatsApp changes its terms to bar general purpose chatbots from its platform

Chat app WhatsApp, owned by Meta has changed its corporate API policy this week to ban general-purpose chatbots from its platform. The move is likely to impact WhatsApp-based assistants from companies like OpenAI, Perplexity and Khosla Ventures-backed Luziaand supported by General Catalyst Por.

The company has added a new section to address “AI providers” in its business API terms, with an emphasis on general-purpose chatbots. The terms, which take effect on January 15, 2026, say Meta will not allow AI model providers to distribute their AI assistants on WhatsApp.

Providers and developers of artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies, including but not limited to large language models, generative artificial intelligence platforms, general purpose 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 Solution, directly or indirectly, for the purpose of providing, delivering, offering, selling, or otherwise making available such technologies when such technologies are the primary (rather than incidental or additional) functionality made available for use, as determined by Meta in its sole discretion.

Meta confirmed this move to TechCrunch and specified that this move will not affect companies using AI to serve customers on WhatsApp. For example, a travel company that uses a bot for customer service will not be excluded from the service.

Meta’s rationale behind this move is that the WhatsApp Business API is designed for businesses that serve customers, rather than acting as a chatbot distribution platform. The company said that while it was building the API for business-to-business use cases, it saw an unexpected use case in recent months of serving general-purpose chatbots.

“The purpose of the WhatsApp Business API is to help businesses provide customer support and send relevant updates. Our focus is on supporting the tens of thousands of businesses building these experiences on WhatsApp,” a Meta spokesperson said in a response to TechCrunch.

Meta said the new chatbot use cases put a heavy burden on the system due to increased message volume and required a different type of support, which the company was not yet ready for. The company prohibits use cases that fall outside “the intended design and strategic focus” of the API.

This move will effectively make WhatsApp unavailable as a platform for the distribution of AI solutions such as assistants or agents. It also means that Meta AI is the only assistant available in the chat app.

Last year, OpenAI launched ChatGPT on WhatsApp, and earlier this year, Perplexity launched its own bot on the chat app to tap into its user base of over 3 billion people. Both bots could answer questions, understand media files, answer questions about them, respond to voice notes and generate images. This probably generated a lot of message volume.

However, there was a bigger problem for Meta. WhatsApp’s Business API is one of the main ways the chat app makes money. It charges companies based on different message templates, such as marketing, tools, authentication, and support. Since there was no provision for chatbots in this API design, WhatsApp could not charge for them.

During Meta’s Q1 2025 earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said pointed out that business messaging is a great opportunity for the company to generate revenue.

“Right now, the vast majority of our business is advertising in Facebook and Instagram feeds,” he says. “But WhatsApp now has more than 3 billion monthly [active users]with more than 100 million people in the US and growing rapidly. Messenger is also used by more than a billion people every month, and there are now as many messages sent on Instagram every day as on Messenger. Business messaging should be the next pillar of our business.”