BRUSSELS  –  The EU said Thursday it had opened an antitrust probe to determine if the way Meta is rolling out AI features in WhatsApp breaches the bloc’s competition rules. The move against the US giant marks the latest attempt by the 27-nation EU to rein in Big Tech, in the face of strong pushback by the government of US President Donald Trump.  The probe falls under the bloc’s antitrust rules rather than its newly reinforced digital laws, which Trump has accused of unfairly targeting American firms — threatening retaliation.  The European Commission said it was concerned that a newly announced Meta policy “may prevent third party AI providers from offering their services through WhatsApp”. WhatsApp pushed back against the claims as “baseless”. But EU competition chief Teresa Ribera said the bloc must “act to prevent dominant digital incumbents from abusing their power to crowd out innovative competitors”.   “This is why we are investigating if Meta’s new policy might be illegal under competition rules, and whether we should act quickly to prevent any possible irreparable harm to competition in the AI space,” Ribera said in a statement.