Microsoft has confirmed that its AI assistant, Copilot, will no longer be accessible on WhatsApp after January 15, marking the end of its presence on one of the world’s most widely used messaging platforms. The company says the withdrawal is necessary to comply with WhatsApp’s newly revised platform policies, which prohibit general-purpose AI chatbots from operating through the WhatsApp Business API.
WhatsApp announced last month that the API—which powers high-volume communication for businesses—would no longer be available to AI chatbots from companies like Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity and others. The Meta-owned platform stated that it wants to reserve this infrastructure for other business use cases, not as a distribution channel for standalone conversational AI.
This change does not prevent businesses from using AI to support their customers within their own workflows. Instead, it specifically blocks external AI assistants from offering general-purpose chat capabilities to WhatsApp’s user base. OpenAI had already shared plans to discontinue its WhatsApp integration in January, and Microsoft has now followed suit.
After January 15, users will need to shift to Microsoft’s Copilot mobile apps or the web-based Copilot experience to continue accessing the chatbot. However, there is a notable caveat: chat history will not move with them.
Because Copilot on WhatsApp operated without authentication, none of the conversations can be synced or transferred to Microsoft’s broader ecosystem. The company warns users that their previous chats will be permanently lost once the integration shuts down. It advises anyone who wishes to retain past exchanges to export their WhatsApp conversations using the platform’s built-in tools before the cutoff date.
Microsoft emphasized the importance of acting quickly, as “their chat history isn’t being preserved when they make the move to Microsoft’s platform because the access to the chatbot on WhatsApp was unauthenticated.”
The policy change marks a shift in how WhatsApp positions itself in the AI era, drawing a line between customer-service use cases and the growing wave of general-purpose AI assistants. For Microsoft and other AI providers, the move underscores the increasing need to rely on their own apps and ecosystems as messaging platforms refine their rules around AI availability.
