AIBRIEF
The Commission has named ChatGPT as a search engine and Reddit and Roblox as platforms, with a January 2027 deadline for stricter content and minor protection rules.
The European Commission on August 31, 2026 designated ChatGPT as a "Very Large Online Search Engine" under the Digital Services Act, placing OpenAI's chatbot in the same regulatory tier as Google and Bing. Reddit and Roblox were named "Very Large Online Platforms" in the same round, with all three services given until January 2027 to meet additional obligations.
The classification is keyed to function, not product marketing. ChatGPT qualifies because it can pull live results from the web in response to user prompts, and the Commission treats it as a hybrid service. Reddit and Roblox land in the platform tier because their users disseminate third-party content, including posts and user-built games, to a public audience above the 45-million-EU-user threshold that triggers the "very large" label.
"Very large" status brings four obligation categories: systemic-risk assessments covering illegal content, harms to minors, and effects on public discourse; mitigation of those risks; transparency reporting on content moderation and recommender systems; and outside auditing. Designated services have four months to publish those plans.
Supervision is split. Ireland's Coimisiún na Meán will oversee ChatGPT, and the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) will oversee Reddit and Roblox, working with the Commission. With this round, the Commission has now designated 28 services under the DSA.
The open question is how the existing search-engine obligations will translate to an AI assistant. The Commission has not yet published the systemic-risk frameworks these services will be measured against.