Microsoft’s AI chatbot Copilot will reportedly be removed from WhatsApp on January 15, the creator has announced. After that point, WhatsApp users will not be able to chat with the AI unless they move to Microsoft’s Copilot mobile apps or access the chatbot via the web.
The company said it will remove Copilot from the popular messaging app to comply with WhatsApp’s updated platform policies, introduced last month.
At the time, the Meta-owned messaging app said it would discontinue allowing general-purpose AI chatbots to use its WhatsApp Business API to serve their customers. Rather, it aimed to keep those resources for other types of businesses.
This shift does not mean that companies can’t use AI to serve their own customers. But it does kill off WhatsApp as a consumer distribution channel for AI chatbots, hitting companies like Microsoft, OpenAI, and Perplexity.
OpenAI already announced that it would wind down its WhatsApp integration in January. For Copilot users on WhatsApp, however, their chat history is not being preserved during the switchover to Microsoft’s platform, as access to the chatbot on WhatsApp was unauthenticated.
Microsoft is urging any users who need to hold on to their chats for reference to export them using WhatsApp’s built-in tools before the January 15 cut-off.
