.svg?width=1400)
In this analysis
AI competition is not only a contest over which company builds the strongest model. It is also a contest over who controls the interface through which hundreds of millions of people encounter those models. The European Commission's June interim order concerning WhatsApp goes directly to that distribution layer.
Distribution can be a moat
EU regulators ordered Meta to restore rival AI assistants' access to WhatsApp's business interface on earlier terms while an antitrust investigation continues. The Commission's concern is that control of a dominant communications platform could be used to advantage Meta's own assistant and raise rivals' costs.
Meta disputes that interpretation and has described the intervention as regulatory overreach. The underlying antitrust question remains to be decided.
Interim measures change the balance before the final ruling
Competition cases can take years. In a fast-moving technology market, a final victory may arrive after users, developers and distribution channels have already consolidated around one provider. Interim measures are powerful because they alter conduct while the legal case is unresolved.
That power also carries risk. Regulators can preserve competition, but they can also impose costs before liability has been finally established. The evidentiary threshold and proportionality of the intervention therefore matter.
The case is about the gateway as much as the model
If AI assistants become a primary way people retrieve information and perform tasks, control of messaging, operating systems and browsers may matter as much as model quality. Brussels is effectively testing whether competition law can intervene at that gateway before network effects become difficult to reverse.