Microsoft to withdraw Copilot from WhatsApp on 15 January

Microsoft’s AI assistant Copilot will be removed from WhatsApp on 15 January, the company has confirmed. After this date, users will no longer be able to access the chatbot through the messaging service and will instead need to turn to Microsoft’s dedicated Copilot mobile apps or the web version, as per a report by TechCrunch.

The withdrawal follows WhatsApp’s updated platform policies announced last month. Under the revised rules, Meta’s messaging platform will no longer permit general-purpose AI chatbots to operate via the WhatsApp Business API, reserving the infrastructure for other business use cases. While the change does not restrict companies from using AI to support their own customers, it effectively closes WhatsApp as a distribution channel for third-party AI bots — affecting Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity and others.

OpenAI had already disclosed plans to phase out its WhatsApp integration in January.

For Copilot users, the transition comes with an additional setback: chat histories will not be retained when moving off WhatsApp. As the integration operated without user authentication, Microsoft is advising anyone who wishes to preserve past conversations to export them using WhatsApp’s native tools ahead of the 15 January deadline.