Brussels just regulated ChatGPT as a search engine

The European Commission did something on Monday no regulator has done to a chatbot before: it classified ChatGPT as a search engine.

Not a social network. Not a general-purpose AI product. A Very Large Online Search Engine under the Digital Services Act, the law’s strictest tier for search. In the same announcement, Brussels designated Reddit and Roblox Very Large Online Platforms. All three had declared at least 45 million average monthly users in the European Union, the statutory trigger. The roster under that enhanced regime now stands at 28.

The legal move is deceptively simple. ChatGPT, the Commission wrote, “can engage with and respond to users’ prompts and queries, including by searching the web.” That hybrid function was enough. A system that answers in prose is now overseen as infrastructure that organises the web. The Next Web, citing the companies’ own reports, put ChatGPT’s EU reach at 159 million monthly users in the six months to March which is well above the bar, and the first AI chatbot pulled into the regime.

OpenAI’s Irish entity has four months after notification  “by January 2027,” in the Commission’s wording to assess and mitigate systemic risks from the service and its algorithms: illegal content, harm to minors, users’ physical and mental well-being, fundamental rights, elections and public security. Brussels gains investigative powers over how the product works. Supervision is shared with Ireland’s Coimisiún na Meán; Reddit and Roblox sit with the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets. The three were already under the DSA’s baseline duties. This is the upgrade.

Henna Virkkunen, executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said the services “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.”

This is not the AI Act. It is older internet law applied to a new object. The designation is not a finding of wrongdoing. Secondary coverage adds the rest of the VLOSE club with independent audits, researcher data access, and fines of up to 6% of worldwide turnover which Monday’s press release does not spell out.

The test is whether a statute written for ranking pages can audit a model that generates them. For every other chatbot approaching 45 million Europeans, the precedent is set.

Sources:

This account is based on the European Commission’s designation of 31 August 2026 (press release IP/26/1772; official notice), confirmed the same day by Reuters and The Verge. User-reach figures beyond the Commission’s 45 million threshold are from The Next Web.