EU Names ChatGPT Search a Very Large Online Search Engine

On August 31, the European Commission designated OpenAI's ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine, placing the chatbot's search function under the Digital Services Act's most stringent tier of obligations. The trigger is 159.1 million EU search users.

Writing at Tech Policy Press, AWO's Mathias Vermeulen and Laureline Lemoine, both platform-regulation lawyers in Brussels, lay out what flips on. "ChatGPT's search function will now be subject to the DSA's due diligence obligations: risk assessments, mitigation measures, independent audits, data access, and transparency reporting," they write. The Commission's lens, they say, "will matter most for risks like negative effects on democratic processes, civic discourse and electoral processes, as well as public security, public health, minors, and mental well-being." Media pluralism is named as its own systemic-risk category under Article 34(1)(b).

The designation also opens the doors regulators care about most. Outside researchers get vetted access to ChatGPT search data under Article 40(4). OpenAI has to account for its advertising system and publish an ad repository under Article 39. And a heavier test is visibly in view: "A gatekeeper designation under the DMA no longer looks far-fetched, provided OpenAI meets the relevant qualitative and quantitative thresholds."

One scoping caveat sits at the center of the piece. The designation covers the search function, not the whole product. As the authors put it, "the chat interface that lets users interact with the model does not necessarily search the web." Obligations begin in January 2027.