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After half a year of the ban, OpenAI's ChatGPT has officially returned to WhatsApp in Europe on July 13, 2026. This comeback was made possible due to the strong intervention by the European Commission, but the service is currently limited to the European Economic Area (EEA), including 27 EU member states as well as Liechtenstein, Iceland, and Norway.
Simple, registration-free, multimodal experience
Users in Europe can now interact with this chatbot directly using their verified official phone number 1-800-CHATGPT (+1-800-242-8478), without needing to register for an OpenAI account. The service supports highly flexible multimodal features, including multilingual text prompts, image uploads, voice messages, and image generation. To achieve a more seamless experience, users can also choose to link their WhatsApp account with their ChatGPT account, enabling seamless reading of chat context and synchronization of message history.
Potentially equipped with a new GPT-5.5 and gpt-image-2
In terms of model details, the bot claims it runs on the GPT-5.5 model. Additionally, due to its extremely high speed and accuracy in image generation, the public generally suspects that image generation requests have been routed to the new gpt-image-2 model. However, it remains unknown whether OpenAI has set usage restrictions when users do not link personal accounts or if it quietly downgrades to a cheaper older model in the background.
EU "Interim Measures" Breaks Meta's Wall
This return is a direct result of the competition between major companies. As early as January 15, 2026, Meta revised its business rules, publicly banning ChatGPT services on WhatsApp, along with Microsoft's Copilot and Perplexity, leaving only Meta's own AI assistant on the platform. This behavior suspected of monopolization immediately attracted regulatory attention. In June 2026, the European Commission issued "interim measures" orders, forcing Meta to allow competing AI services to relaunch for free.
At the same time, while returning to WhatsApp in the European market with the help of policy support, OpenAI is also actively expanding to other regional third-party social platforms — currently, ChatGPT is available on Kakao Messenger in South Korea and some markets' Viber.