EU officially classifies ChatGPT as a search engine, triggering its strictest platform rules

The European Commission on Monday designated ChatGPT as a “Very Large Online Search Engine” under the EU’s Digital Services Act, placing OpenAI’s chatbot under the same tier of regulatory scrutiny as Google and Bing. Reddit and Roblox received parallel designations as Very Large Online Platforms. All three have until January 2027 to comply.

The DSA’s “very large” designation is the heaviest tier of the regulation, reserved for services that report at least 45 million average monthly users in the EU. ChatGPT cleared that bar with 159.1 million monthly EU users; Reddit reported 57.2 million and Roblox 46.6 million. The total number of services designated under these categories now stands at 28.

Why calling ChatGPT a “search engine” matters

The VLOSE label — rather than a standard VLOP designation — reflects how the EU views ChatGPT’s functional role. The Commission treats it as a “hybrid service”: one that responds to queries by actively pulling from the web, not merely generating text from training data. That framing subjects OpenAI to obligations developed specifically for search engines, including requirements to explain algorithmic ranking and surfacing decisions.

For ChatGPT, which has added real-time web search to its responses, the classification fits its current product better than a pure generative-AI category would. Whether the EU creates a dedicated AI-system tier under future legislation remains an open question; for now, the closest available slot was search engine.

What compliance actually requires

Designated services must assess and actively mitigate systemic risks arising from their platforms — covering the spread of illegal content, impacts on minors’ mental health, effects on electoral processes, and threats to public security. They must also submit to annual audits by independent third parties and share data with the Commission and approved researchers on request.

Henna Virkkunen, the EC’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said the designations mean “ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox will now be held to a higher standard of scrutiny and accountability in the European Union, in line with their large impact on our citizens and society.”

Reddit said it has been preparing for the VLOP requirements and “looks forward to coordinating with EU regulators while providing transparency for Reddit users.” OpenAI and Roblox had not publicly commented at the time of writing.

A tighter net around AI platforms

The designation lands as the EU’s broader AI Act is also rolling out enforcement timelines. Taken together, the two regulations put major AI services under overlapping layers of EU law: the DSA governs what they distribute and how they moderate it; the AI Act will govern the underlying models and systems. For OpenAI, which already faced scrutiny over GDPR compliance in several EU member states, the VLOSE designation adds a formal, Commission-level supervision relationship with hard deadlines attached.

The Commission’s full press release is available at ec.europa.eu.