When WhatsApp Blocks Your AI
Table of Contents
When WhatsApp Blocks Your AI - Building an alternative
My self-hosted AI assistant worked perfectly for weeks. Then WhatsApp decided to block it.
But Telegram made an offer I couldn’t refuse.
Here’s how I built two alternatives in a weekend with Cursor.
The Problem
I had built a private AI assistant running on a Raspberry Pi 5.
It used WhatsApp as the interface—I could message my AI, get responses, even have it speak through a connected speaker.
Then one day: nothing. No responses. The WhatsApp session was dead.
Most likely, WhatsApp’s anti-bot detection had flagged my assistant and blocklisted it.
Fair enough though—it was a bot; it’s hard to distinguish malicous ones from hobby projects.
GÖD’S GATE
👉 I named my AI assistant Prometheus, after one of the characters of my sci-fi epic GÖD’S GATE. Check it out! 👾📚
Run it yourself?
If you want to run it yourself, clone this GitHub repo and follow the setup.
Donations?
You can also toss me a coin: Paypal
Two Solutions
Rather than fight WhatsApp’s terms of service, I built two new interfaces:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ PROMETHEUS AI - INTERFACES │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │
│ ╔═══════════════╗ ╔═══════════════╗ ╔═══════════════╗ │
│ ║ WhatsApp ║ ║ Telegram ║ ║ Web Portal ║ │
│ ║ (Blocked) ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ │
│ ╚═══════╤═══════╝ ╚═══════╤═══════╝ ╚═══════╤═══════╝ │
│ │ │ │ │
│ ╳ ▼ ▼ │
│ BLOCKED ┌─────────────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ OLLAMA + GEMMA │ │
│ │ (Local AI Brain) │ │
│ └─────────────────────────────────────┘ │
│ │ │
│ ▼ │
│ ┌─────────────┐ │
│ │ Piper TTS │──▶ 🔊 │
│ └─────────────┘ │
│ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Solution 1: Telegram Bot
Why Telegram?
| Telegram | |
|---|---|
| Unofficial API (reverse-engineered) | Official Bot API |
| Aggressive anti-bot detection | Bots are first-class citizens :D |
| Can be blocked anytime | Stable, documented, supported |
| Requires phone number + QR | Just needs an API token |
Telegram wants you to build bots. They provide documentation, rate limits, and a proper API. No reverse-engineering required.
How It Works
┌─────────────┐ ┌──────────────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌────────┐
│ Telegram │───▶│ Telegram Bridge │───▶│ FastAPI │───▶│ Ollama │
│ App │◀───│ (Python) │◀───│ (API) │◀───│(Gemma) │
└─────────────┘ └──────────────────┘ └─────────┘ └────────┘
- Create a bot via @BotFather (2 minutes)
- Get your user ID for authorization
- Deploy a Python container that polls Telegram’s API
- Messages flow to Ollama, responses flow back
The entire setup took a few hours.
Features
- Direct messages — Just like texting
- Group support — Add the bot to groups, trigger with “Prometheus”
- Voice output — Write “speak” to have the Pi read the response aloud
- Context memory — Remembers recent conversation
Solution 2: Web Portal
Why a Web Interface?
Sometimes you want to chat from a laptop. Or you don’t want to install another messaging app. Or you want something that looks like ChatGPT but runs entirely on your hardware.
The Interface
A clean, minimal chat interface:
Security
- Password protected — Simple authentication
- Cloudflare Tunnel — Secure external access without port forwarding
- No data collection — All processing happens locally
External Access
Using Cloudflare Tunnel, I can access my AI from anywhere:
https://chat.my-domain.com → Cloudflare Tunnel → Pi → Ollama
No open ports, no dynamic DNS hassles, just secure tunneling.
Technical Details
All three interfaces (WhatsApp, Telegram, Web Portal) connect to the same backend:
# docker-compose.yml (simplified)
services:
ollama: # The AI brain
piper-tts: # Text-to-speech
whatsapp: # WhatsApp bridge (blocked)
telegram: # Telegram bridge (new!)
web-portal: # Web interface (new!)
Each interface is a separate Docker container. Adding a new interface doesn’t affect the others. Removing one doesn’t break anything.
The full code is available on GitHub.
What’s Next
Connect the chatbot to the Internet.
