WhatsApp will now charge its AI-powered chatbots to operate in Italy

Meta announced on Wednesday that it will charge developers a fee to run chatbots on WhatsApp in regions where regulators force the company to allow them. The move comes after the company’s ban on third-party chatbots on WhatsApp went into effect on January 15.

For now, Meta will collect fees from developers in Italy, where that country is based The competition watchdog asked the company to suspend its policy last December. The new pricing for non-template responses will begin on February 16, the company said. Meta plans to charge developers $0.0691 / €0.0572 / £0.0498 per message for AI responses. This could result in huge bills for developers if users are exchanging thousands of queries with AI chatbots every day.

Earlier this month, Meta sent notices to developers to create an exemption for Italian phone numbers and allow AI-powered chatbots to serve those customers. At the time, the company did not mention any plans to charge developers.

Currently, WhatsApp already charges businesses for using its API for various form responses to customers, which include use cases like marketing, utility, or authentication. This includes messages users receive about payment reminders and shipping updates.

“Where we are legally required to provide AI-powered chatbots through the WhatsApp Business API, we offer pricing to businesses that choose to use our platform to provide these services,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch. This could also set a precedent for other geographies if Meta is forced to give in and let developers run their own chatbots.

Meta first announced this last October This will prevent all third-party chatbots from using WhatsApp through its WhatsApp Business API.

Meta said its systems were not designed to handle responses from AI bots and were stressed.

“The emergence of AI-powered chatbots on our business API has put pressure on our systems that were not designed to support them,” the company said at the time. “This logic assumes that WhatsApp is somehow a physical app store. The path to market for AI companies is the app stores themselves, their websites, and industry partnerships; not the WhatsApp Business platform.”

Since then, various regions, incl European UnionItaly and Brazil launched anti-competitive investigations. Brazilian censorship authority first Meta was asked to suspend the policy. However, a court in Brazil I sided with Meta last week He rescinded the initial order that blocked the new policy. As a result, the company has asked developers not to offer its AI-powered chatbots to users in Brazil, TechCrunch has learned.

Since the introduction of this policy, developers are forced to send a pre-defined message to their chatbot users on WhatsApp to redirect them to their site or app. Providers such as OpenAI, Perplexity and Microsoft announced last year that their WhatsApp bots would no longer work after January 15, and urged users to access them on other platforms.