Instinct, the invite-only personal AI agent that handles tasks like bookings and inbox management through WhatsApp and iMessage, stopped answering WhatsApp messages for some users on 1 November, prompting speculation that Meta had suspended the service.
Founder Noah Shinn said on X that a configuration issue had interrupted payments to one of Instinct's service providers, blocking replies for part of the following morning, and that the problem has since been fixed.
"We're making changes to prevent this from happening again," Shinn said, adding that incoming messages sent during the outage had reached Instinct and that the company was following up with users who never got a response.
The suspicion was not baseless as Meta had previously banned general-purpose AI assistants from the WhatsApp Business Platform.
The rules took effect on 15 January and pushed both OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Copilot off the service.
The European Commission then opened an investigation into whether the restrictions favoured Meta's own AI.
In June, it issued interim measures ordering Meta to restore a rival AI app's access to WhatsApp in the European Economic Area while the investigation continued.
Separately, some users, including one who posted screenshots on X on 31 October, reported their WhatsApp accounts were disabled for Terms of Service violations after signing up to Instinct.
However, there no evidence has tied those bans to Meta targeting the startup specifically.
Instinct, built by Noah Shinn's startup Spear Street Technology, was founded in 2025.
It grown to a reported annualised transaction volume of nearly $1 billion and carries a $10 billion valuation following a reported funding round.
