ChatGPT just landed in the EU's highest-scrutiny regulatory tier.
The European Commission has designated ChatGPT a Very Large Online Search Engine under the Digital Services Act, the EU's rulebook for major online services. Reddit and Roblox received a related but separate label, Very Large Online Platform, in the same announcement. Both designations trigger the DSA's strictest obligations: mitigating risks to minors, addressing user mental health, and clamping down on illegal content. The law also bars these services from targeting ads at minors or using sensitive traits like sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, or political belief to target anyone.
Until now, the DSA's very-large-platform tier has mostly caught social networks and marketplaces - think Facebook, Google Search, TikTok. Folding ChatGPT into that bracket signals Brussels sees conversational AI as functionally comparable to a search engine, a categorization that will likely shape how other chatbots get regulated next. For OpenAI, it means new audits, transparency reports, and risk assessments layered onto a product built for speed, not compliance paperwork.
Whether a chatbot really behaves like a search engine is a definitional fight OpenAI will have every incentive to pick.