The European Commission on Monday designated OpenAI’s ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine and Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms under the Digital Services Act, bringing all three under the bloc’s strictest online-safety rules after they declared more than 45 million average monthly users in the EU.
Brussels has now decided that ChatGPT is a VLOSE because its web-search functionality makes it legally a search engine, making it the first standalone AI service directly supervised by the Commission under the DSA.
Reddit and Roblox were targeted due to their size and function as an online platform.
The three services have until January 2027, to meet the extra duties that apply only to VLOPs and VLOSEs.
Those include assessing and mitigating systemic risks from their services and algorithms: Illegal content, harm to minors, effects on users’ physical and mental well-being, fundamental rights, elections and public security.
The regime also imposes additional transparency requirements, including greater disclosure around advertising and recommender systems and access to data for vetted researchers and regulators, including the use of independent audits.
The Commission thus gains investigative powers over how the services work. Fines for serious breaches can reach 6 per cent of worldwide annual turnover.
The three companies have to identify and mitigate “systemic risks” linked to illegal content, minors, wellbeing, fundamental rights and electoral processes gives regulators considerable leverage over the way platforms design and operate their content-moderation, recommendation and other algorithmic systems.
Brussels will supervise compliance with Ireland’s Coimisiún na Meán for ChatGPT and Reddit, and with the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets for Roblox.
The Commission’s own list records ChatGPT, provided by OpenAI Ireland Limited, at 159.1 million average monthly EU users; Reddit at 57.2 million; and Roblox at 46.6 million.
The formal designation decisions had not yet been published when the press release went out.
The Commission described ChatGPT as a hybrid service; an AI system that answers prompts and can search the web.
On that basis it qualifies as an online search engine under the DSA rather than as a chatbot or an ordinary online platform. outside the very-large threshold.
MLex noted that this is the first standalone AI service placed under direct Commission DSA supervision.
This designation adds another layer of EU oversight to ChatGPT, which is already subject to obligations under the bloc’s separate AI Act.
Reddit is defined as a discussion platform on which users create and share content in topic-based communities.
Roblox is an immersive gaming and creation service on which users publish and play games made by others.
Both count as platforms because they let users disseminate third-party content to the public.
Henna Virkkunen, the Commission vice-president for technological sovereignty, security and democracy, said the three would now be “held to a higher standard of scrutiny and accountability in the EU, in line with their large impact on our citizens and society.”
They join a list that already includes Meta’s Instagram, TikTok, Google Search, Amazon and X.
Roblox, popular with children, has been under investigation by the Dutch ACM since January over whether it adequately protects minors. That national file now sits alongside EU-level DSA duties.
Reddit’s forums and ChatGPT’s answers raise separate questions about illegal content, political manipulation and the well-being of young users, all of which the annual risk assessments will have to address.
Designation itself is not a finding of breach; it is a size trigger. Preliminary findings against TikTok over child accounts, and large DSA fines against other platforms this summer, show how the Commission has used the same toolkit once services are in scope.
The companies had signalled user numbers above the 45 million line earlier this year.
In July a Commission spokesman said designation of ChatGPT and Roblox was “definitely possible.”
OpenAI has said it continues to engage with Brussels.
We have designated ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine and Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms under the Digital Services Act.
They now have four months to comply with additional DSA obligations.
More: https://t.co/gIR8vTolmB#DSA pic.twitter.com/luusxUd3i4
— European Commission (@EU_Commission) August 31, 2026
