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EU Orders Meta To Open WhatsApp To Rival AI Chatbots

3 weeks 6 days ago
The European Commission has ordered Meta to temporarily restore free WhatsApp Business API access for rival AI chatbots while it investigates whether Meta's ban on third-party assistants abuses its dominant position. Meta says it will appeal, calling the move "regulatory overreach" that would let major AI companies use a paid WhatsApp product for free. The BBC reports: The EU said it began its investigation, in December 2025, after Meta banned third-party general-purpose AI assistants from the WhatsApp for Business API. It said that appeared to be an abuse of Meta's dominant position in European markets. So, as an interim measure as its investigation continues, it has given Meta five working days to re-instate access for third-party general-purpose AI assistants to the WhatsApp for Business API under the same terms and conditions that were in place previously. "In rapidly evolving markets, competition can be lost long before a final decision is adopted," said Teresa Ribera, the Commission's executive vice-president for clean, just and competitive transition. "This is why these interim measures will remain in place for the duration of the investigation." She added the decision "preserved choice for citizens across Europe on the AI assistants they want to use with WhatsApp, without that decision being made for them." The Commission said if Meta failed to comply with its interim decision it could be fined up to 10% up of its total turnover. "The European Commission has decided that OpenAI and some of the largest companies in the world can use the paid-for WhatsApp Business product for free," it said in a statement. "This is regulatory overreach subsidized by the many European companies that pay. We will appeal."

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Anthropic Releases Claude Fable, a 'Safe' Version of Mythos

3 weeks 6 days ago
Anthropic is releasing Claude Fable 5, a Mythos-class AI model for enterprise customers and paid subscribers. The company says broader access is possible thanks to new safeguards that block high-risk requests in areas like cybersecurity and biology. "For us, it's really around what we call 'race to the top,' being able to provide this technology in a valuable fashion, and at the same time providing the right safety guardrails so that it can do asymmetrically more benefits than harm," Dianne Penn, Anthropic's head of product management for research, told CNBC in an interview. CNBC reports: [W]ith the launch of Claude Fable 5, Anthropic is honoring its stated "eventual goal" to deploy Mythos-class models at scale. It's also capitalizing on growing momentum and investor interest in its technology ahead of a potentially massive IPO, which is expected to take place as soon as this year. Anthropic said Claude Fable 5 shows "exceptional performance" across software engineering and knowledge work tasks. On some benchmarks, it scored more than 10% higher than Claude Opus 4.8, another model the company announced late last month, according to a blog post. Claude Fable 5 represents a "significant jump" in capability, which is why Anthropic had to implement additional guardrails to prevent misuse, Penn said. If a user asks a high-risk question, like how to make ricin, a toxin, for instance, the model will block its response and fall back to Claude Opus 4.8 to deliver a safe answer. "What we wanted to do was to be very intentional about building new types of classifiers and new types of safety guardrails in place for this launch," Penn said. Anthropic also released an updated Mythos model called Claude Mythos 5. "It's the same underlying model as Claude Fable 5, but with the safeguards lifted in some areas," reports CNBC.

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