On August 31, 2026, the European Commission gave ChatGPT a label it has never given an AI chatbot before: a "Very Large Online Search Engine," or VLOSE, under the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA). It's the same legal category Google Search falls into — and it comes with the strictest oversight rules the EU has.
Why ChatGPT got this label. The Digital Services Act already regulates the biggest online platforms and search engines, requiring them to manage risks and be more transparent once they reach 45 million average monthly users in the EU. OpenAI disclosed that ChatGPT's search feature — the part that looks things up on the live web to answer your questions — had about 159 million average monthly users in the EU over the six months ending March 2026, more than three times that threshold. Because ChatGPT can search the web and return results the way Google does, the Commission decided it counts as a search engine under the law, not just a chatbot. Reddit and Roblox were designated the same day as "Very Large Online Platforms" (VLOPs), a related category, after reporting 57.2 million and roughly 48 million EU users.
What this actually requires OpenAI to do. Companies in this category have to run yearly risk assessments looking at things like illegal content, harm to minors, effects on people's mental and physical health, and risks to elections and public safety. They also have to submit to independent outside audits, give regulators and vetted researchers access to relevant data, publish transparency reports twice a year, and set up a clear channel for people to report illegal content so it actually gets acted on. Companies that don't comply can be fined up to 6% of their global annual revenue — the DSA has already levied close to €870 million in fines against various companies, including a €550 million penalty against AliExpress.
When it kicks in. OpenAI now has four months from the Commission's formal notification to come into compliance — the Commission's own announcement points to a deadline around January 2027, though some outlets reporting on the story have described it as arriving anywhere from November 2026 to January 2027, since the exact notification date hasn't been made public. Either way, expect the practical changes to show up gradually over the next few months rather than overnight.
What changes for you, specifically. Nothing about how ChatGPT answers your questions changes today — this is a regulatory step, not a new feature. But over the coming months, you can expect a few concrete things to show up for EU users: a published archive of any ads shown inside ChatGPT, regular public reports on how OpenAI is handling risks like misinformation or harm to minors, and — most usefully — an official way to flag content that seems illegal or harmful and expect OpenAI to actually respond to it. If you're used to reporting a scam message or harmful post on a big platform like Facebook or Google and having somewhere for that report to go, this brings ChatGPT closer to that same standard.
This is a different law from the EU AI Act, which is a separate set of rules phasing in through 2026 and mostly covers how AI systems are built and disclosed (see our guide on what the EU AI Act changes for you). The Digital Services Act, used here, is the same law that already governs Google, Facebook, and other large platforms — think of this less as a new AI-specific rule and more as the EU deciding that a wildly popular AI chatbot now has to play by the same safety rules as any other major search tool.