ChatGPT just got categorised into one of the toughest regulatory categories in tech. Its monthly user threshold puts the chatbot in the same row with tech giants like Amazon and TikTok when it comes to their operations in Europe.
The European Commission announced on August 31, 2026, that it has designated ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine (VLOSE). Reddit and Roblox are now labelled as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs), under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
The three companies each declared reaching at least 45 million average monthly users in the EU, the threshold that triggers the designation. They now have until January 2027 to comply with extra rules that apply only to the largest platforms. This update may serve as a sign that AI tools and online communities have grown large enough to be treated like the internet’s biggest players, facing all the oversight that comes with it.
For example, OpenAI must now regularly examine how ChatGPT and its algorithmic systems could create risks for:
- illegal content;
- fundamental rights and freedom of expression;
- children and minors;
- users’ physical and mental wellbeing;
- elections and democratic processes;
- public security;
- discrimination and other societal harms.
This is not a full list of extra obligations that must be in AI developer’s focus next year. VLOSEs must conduct these assessments at least annually and take those factors into account before introducing any service updates.
The DSA is an EU law that sets rules for how online platforms handle harmful content, user safety, and transparency. Services under a certain size follow baseline rules. But once a platform crosses 45 million monthly EU users, roughly 10% of the bloc’s population, it moves into a stricter tier. That means assessing and reducing risks tied to its algorithms, submitting to independent audits, opening up certain data to outside researchers, and addressing effects on things like minors’ wellbeing, elections, and public security.
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI chatbot, was designated specifically as a search engine because of how people use it to look up information. Reddit is a discussion-forum platform organized around topic communities, and Roblox is an online gaming and game-creation platform popular with younger users. All three now join roughly two dozen other services already under this heightened tier, including Amazon, Booking.com, and several major social networks.
At the first glance, nothing in this designation touches fintech or payment platforms directly. But the same size-based logic applies to any consumer service, regardless of industry; the DSA doesn’t carve out exceptions for financial apps. Marketplaces and travel platforms like Amazon and Booking.com are already on the list, which shows the threshold isn’t limited to social media or search. As payment super-apps, buy-now-pay-later platforms, and crypto exchanges keep growing their EU user bases, it’s a fair question whether any of them could eventually cross that same 45-million-user line and inherit the same audit and risk-assessment obligations now landing on ChatGPT.
