ChatGPT Is Now Regulated Like Google as a Search Engine in the EU

The European Commission has widened its toughest Digital Services Act rules again, and this time ChatGPT is the surprise name on the list. Reddit and Roblox were also added, but the oddest move is the one aimed at OpenAI’s assistant: Brussels will treat ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine, not just as another app with a chat box.

The reason is simple enough, at least in the Commission’s telling. ChatGPT answers prompts, can search the web, and behaves like a hybrid service that fits the DSA’s search-engine category. Reddit, by contrast, is being treated as a discussion platform built around topic communities. Roblox is framed as an immersive place where people create and publish games, then play games made by others. All three said they reach at least 45 million average monthly users in the EU, which is the line that brings direct Commission oversight.

That pushes the total number of designated very large platforms and search engines to 28. It also gives the Commission more room to poke around inside the services, including connected systems. And the obligations are not light. Each service has four months, until the end of December, to line up annual systemic-risk assessments, mitigation measures, independent audits, transparency reports twice a year, ad repositories, researcher access, complaint systems, and crisis-response tools. If a recommender system is involved, at least one option must not rely on profiling. Advertising based on profiling with minors’ data is banned.

The money side is painful too. VLOPs and VLOSEs help pay for their own supervision through an annual fee tied to worldwide net income and capped at 0.05 percent. Breaches can bring fines of up to six percent of global annual turnover. For Reddit, that hits advertising and data licensing. For Roblox, it puts its child-focused business model and facial age estimation under sharper scrutiny. For OpenAI, the bigger shock is structural: an AI assistant is now being regulated as a search engine for the first time, which turns a chatbot into a precedent.

Oversight will be split between the Commission and national coordinators: Coimisiún na Meán for ChatGPT and Reddit, and the ACM for Roblox, because they’re established in Ireland and the Netherlands. The message from Brussels is blunt. If a product reaches this scale, the EU will stop pretending it is just a product.