Meta just turned regulatory compliance into a revenue stream. The company announced Wednesday it will charge developers nearly seven cents per message to run AI chatbots on WhatsApp in Italy, starting February 16. The move marks a dramatic pivot from Meta's outright ban on third-party AI chatbots that took effect January 15, and it could reshape how AI companies think about distribution on messaging platforms. What began as a technical limitation argument has evolved into a new business model that could spread to other markets facing similar regulatory scrutiny.
Meta is making developers pay for the privilege of operating AI chatbots on WhatsApp, but only where regulators are forcing its hand. The company announced the new per-message pricing structure Wednesday, setting rates at $0.0691 per AI response in Italy, the first market where antitrust authorities blocked Meta's controversial bot ban.
The pricing kicks in February 16 and applies specifically to non-template responses from AI chatbots operating through WhatsApp's Business API. For developers running conversational AI services that field thousands of queries daily, the math gets expensive fast. A chatbot handling 10,000 messages per day would rack up roughly $691 in daily fees, or over $20,000 monthly, just for the WhatsApp access.
"Where we are legally required to provide AI chatbots through the WhatsApp business API, we are introducing pricing for the companies that choose to use our platform to provide those services," a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch. The carefully worded statement suggests Meta views this as a compliance tax rather than a desired feature.
The announcement caps a turbulent few months for AI developers who built businesses on WhatsApp's massive user base. Meta first dropped the hammer last October when it announced it would block all third-party AI chatbots from WhatsApp, citing technical strain on systems that weren't designed to handle AI-generated responses at scale. The company argued WhatsApp shouldn't be treated as a de facto app store for AI services.
