The EU Regulates ChatGPT Like a Search Engine - DTNS 5343

**Tom Merritt** (0:08)
This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, August 31st, 2026 We've run plum out of August. We tell you what you need to know, give you important context and help each other understand.

**Robb Dunewood** (0:19)
Today, the EU turns its regulatory sites on OpenAI, Reddit and Roblox.

**Tom Merritt** (0:24)
Mm, yeah, that's good stuff for them. Also, it's goodbye to Tim Cook. I'm Tom Merritt.

**Robb Dunewood** (0:31)
And I'm Robb Dunewood.

**Tom Merritt** (0:32)
Let's start with what you need to know with the big story.
Hat tip to RWNash for noting this one on our DTNs subreddit. The European Commission announced Monday that it has deemed ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox as very large online platforms in Europe and therefore subject to the Digital Services Act. ChatGPT actually not a very large online platform, but its designation is a very large search engine, a very large online search engine platform. So they're just falling under the search engine category. Whether it's a platform or a search engine, it counts as very large under the European Union's DSA if it has more than 45 million monthly users. This is pretty straightforward. There's not a whole lot to appeal here. They could if they wanted to, but ChatGPT has reported 159 million monthly active users in the EU, so well beyond the 45 Reddit has reported 57.2 million, and Roblox has reported 48 million. These are all numbers that the companies have reported themselves. So if they were to appeal it, they'd have to be like, we were lying, we were mistaken. They're not going to do that. Under the DSA, every business that is in the social media or search engine space must have mechanisms to report illegal content, provide advertising transparency, and comply with special rules concerning minors. But very large online platforms must also file transparency reports, detail what they're doing to reduce risks on their platform, and pay an annual fee. Risks include the aforementioned illegal content, how to protect your minors, users, physical and mental wellbeing of your users, political things like human rights, election processes, public security. Researchers and regulators must also receive access to data, and the very large companies must submit to independent audits. For search engines, and in this case, that means ChatGPT, the reports must also detail how responses to queries are produced, and how the company assesses any risk to those responses. ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox have four months to come into compliance.
I think it's significant that Roblox has gotten big enough for this, especially with all the child protections that are in the DSA, Rob.
Reddit will be an interesting one, but the most fascinating one to me is ChatGPT. How are they going to comply with these requirements that were meant for search engines? They're meant for Google and Bing, and those kinds of things. And you got kind of a black box when you're talking about OpenAI.

**Robb Dunewood** (3:11)
Yeah, it is interesting from the LLM standpoint. But these tools work very much like a search engine. You can go ask ChatGPT questions, just like you can ask Google questions, and it will give you answers. Therefore, people are using it. Now, it may not technically be a search engine, but people are clearly searching it to get answers to the everyday questions that they would have asked Google or Bing or whatever the case is. You're also right, Tom.
They're reporting their own numbers, and their own numbers are saying that you have now reached this threshold, so there's not a lot of wiggle room that they're going to have on that. However, we know that they are a company, and they're going to try to fight it because it's more conducive for them to not be on this list, and it is for them to be, so I would imagine they'll try to appeal something just in case they get lucky. But I think that it's not just them. I think any of these LLMs that get this big, they are going to be looked at like a search engine because if you remember back to when they were putting the rules in for the DSA, part of the reason for this is that you're so big and you're so influential that you literally can shift how society operates based off of how you interact with it. So I do believe that even though sometimes it can be maybe a little bit overhanded, that they're trying to say that if you get to this point, we've got to treat you different because if we don't, we've just been shown over and over again that you guys don't necessarily look out for society in the way that you should.