The European Commission said on August 31, 2026 that it has designated ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine under the Digital Services Act. In the same notice it designated Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms. Each service, the Commission said, reported at least 45 million average monthly users in the European Union, the threshold that triggers the extra DSA duties.

The labels are not symbolic. Very large search engines and platforms have to assess and mitigate systemic risks from their service and their algorithmic systems. The Commission’s list includes illegal content, harm to minors, effects on users’ physical and mental well-being, fundamental rights, electoral processes, and public security.

The companies have four months from the designation notice. The Commission set January 2027 as the deadline to meet those additional obligations.

Why the search-engine label matters

ChatGPT is the first major chatbot the Commission has placed in the VLOSE category, the bucket built for services that steer people toward information at internet scale. Reddit and Roblox land in the older VLOP bucket used for large social and entertainment platforms. The legal effect is similar: risk assessments, mitigation plans, and direct supervision in Brussels, on a clock that starts now.

The Commission pointed readers to its existing DSA supervision pages and to a fuller press release. The short notice did not name the Commissioners speaking on the file, and it did not publish the user counts beyond the 45 million threshold.

OpenAI, Reddit, and Roblox now have to show how a chatbot, a forum, and a UGC game world will document those risks in the same regulatory language already used for search engines and social networks.

Decoded Take

Calling ChatGPT a search engine is the move that will travel. It puts a conversational model under the same systemic-risk regime as the services that already sit at the top of Europe’s information stack, and it does it on a four-month clock rather than a multi-year code of practice. Other chatbots that clear 45 million EU users should assume they are next. The document to watch is ChatGPT’s first DSA risk assessment, especially how OpenAI treats hallucinations, child safety, and election queries once those answers are treated as search. If that filing is thin, Brussels has a new enforcement handle. If it is specific, the VLOSE label becomes the template for the rest of the chatbot market.