As of January 15, Microsoft's Copilot chatbot will no longer be available on WhatsApp, the company said. After this date, WhatsApp users will not be able to chat with the AI unless they switch to Microsoft's Copilot mobile apps or use the chatbot via network.
Business explained is removing Copilot from the popular messaging app to comply with WhatsApp's revised platform policies announced last month.
At the time, the Meta-owned messaging app said it would no longer support general-purpose AI chatbots to use the WhatsApp Business API to serve customers. Instead, it wanted to reserve these resources for other types of businesses. This change doesn't mean that companies can't use AI to serve their customers. However, this will put an end to WhatsApp being a distribution channel for AI chatbots, which will impact companies such as Microsoft, OpenAI, Embarrassmentand others.
OpenAI already had this announced plans to complete integration with WhatsApp in January.
Unfortunately for Copilot users on WhatsApp, their chat history is not retained after moving to the Microsoft platform because access to the chatbot on WhatsApp was unauthenticated. Microsoft advises users who need to save their conversations for future use to export them using WhatsApp's built-in tools before the January 15 deadline.
