ChatGPT and Copilot are being booted out of WhatsApp

OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot are some leaving WhatsApp acknowledgment to upcoming changes to the messaging app’s presumption of work that volition prohibit utilizing it to administer AI chatbots not made by Meta.

OpenAI announced its planned departure a fewer weeks ago, with Microsoft following it this week. Both companies attributed the departures to Meta’s caller presumption of work for WhatsApp Business Solution, which travel into effect connected January 15th, 2026, and said the chatbots volition stay accessible successful WhatsApp until that date. ChatGPT users tin nexus their accounts to WhatsApp to marque definite their chat past carries over, though Copilot users won’t person that option.

WhatsApp announced the update to its terms successful October, banning AI companies from utilizing its concern API arsenic a organisation level for chatbots. Other companies volition inactive beryllium permitted to usage WhatsApp for lawsuit work oregon enactment chatbots, with the presumption lone prohibiting cases wherever the AI itself is the merchandise — a elemental mode of stopping Meta’s AI rivals utilizing its ain level to scope customers.

“The intent of the WhatsApp Business API is to assistance businesses supply lawsuit enactment and nonstop applicable updates,” an anonymous Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch astatine the time. “Our absorption is connected supporting the tens of thousands of businesses who are gathering these experiences connected WhatsApp.”

The alteration means that different third-party AI chatbots, including Perplexity, are apt to denote departures from WhatsApp soon, leaving Meta AI the lone enactment disposable from adjacent January.