In October 2025, Meta updated the WhatsApp Business Platform's terms of service to bar general-purpose AI chatbots and assistants that are not tied to a specific business's core products or services, according to a TechCrunch report. For most Indian businesses running WhatsApp Business API bots for order tracking, appointment booking, or customer support, this is unlikely to cause disruption — but businesses that built broad, assistant-style bots on top of WhatsApp should review how their bots are scoped and documented.

What Changed

Meta's revised terms draw a line between two kinds of bots on the WhatsApp Business Platform. On one side are bots built to serve a defined business function — answering questions about an order, confirming a delivery, helping a customer book a service, or resolving a support ticket. On the other side are general-purpose AI assistants that behave like a standalone chat companion, answering arbitrary questions unrelated to the business that deployed them. The updated terms are aimed squarely at the second category.

Why This Matters for Indian Businesses

India is WhatsApp's largest market by user base, and a very large share of the platform's business messaging volume — order updates, delivery notifications, appointment reminders, payment confirmations — originates from Indian businesses using the WhatsApp Business API. Most of these use cases are already narrowly scoped to a specific transaction or service, which puts them comfortably on the right side of the new terms. The businesses that need to pay closer attention are those experimenting with AI-driven WhatsApp bots marketed as broad