Key takeaways

  • The EU Commission is classifying ChatGPT as a very large search engine for the first time, putting the chatbot under stricter oversight…
  • The Commission is also reclassifying Reddit and Roblox as very large online platforms.
  • The Commission gains more audit powers as a result, working with authorities in Ireland and the Netherlands.

What happened

The EU Commission is classifying ChatGPT as a very large search engine for the first time, putting the chatbot under stricter oversight rules. The Commission announced the move Monday in Brussels. OpenAI's chatbot can search the web and answer user queries. That makes it a search engine under the Digital Services Act (DSA). ChatGPT reaches at least 45 million monthly users in the EU, the threshold for this classification.

Why it matters

The Commission is also reclassifying Reddit and Roblox as very large online platforms. Both count as platforms because users can share content from other users there. All three services now have four months, until the end of December 2026, to meet extra obligations. That includes assessing risks to users, such as illegal content, dangers to minors, or election interference.

The Commission gains more audit powers as a result, working with authorities in Ireland and the Netherlands. Henna Virkkunen, vice president of the EU Commission, said the services would have to submit to stricter oversight. In total, 28 platforms and search engines are now classified under the DSA. With ChatGPT, the EU Commission mainly gains audit rights over its risks and how it works.

What to watch

The operational requirements include a publicly viewable ad archive, data access for approved researchers, semiannual transparency reports, reporting mechanisms for illegal content along with a complaints process, and a crisis response mechanism. Whether that data access also covers training data or model weights is disputed among legal experts. " The classification doesn't explicitly allow the Commission to test the models directly.