Turkey probes Meta over WhatsApp AI access, orders opening

Turkey’s case against Meta is one of the first explicit antitrust actions framed around access to messaging platforms for AI assistants. The core question is straightforward: can a dominant messaging app bundle its own general‑purpose AI while excluding or handicapping competing models? For the race to AGI, that’s not a side issue—it’s about who controls the main distribution channels to billions of users.

If regulators in Ankara, Brussels and Rome converge on a view that WhatsApp must remain open to third‑party AI assistants on non‑discriminatory terms, Meta’s ability to lock users into Meta AI as their default assistant could be sharply limited. That would keep more oxygen in the market for independent labs and open‑source projects that can’t buy their way onto the main messaging rails.

This case also previews the regulatory posture we’re likely to see around super‑apps and operating systems: bundling a powerful assistant may be treated less like adding a sticker pack and more like embedding a gatekeeper. Even if the immediate impact on AGI timelines is small, the precedent—that distribution for assistants is a competition issue—will shape how aggressively Big Tech tries to fuse messaging and AI.