ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox are being brought under the European Union’s toughest platform oversight regime, expanding the reach of the Digital Services Act to a major generative AI service, a large online community and a user-generated gaming platform.
The European Commission said the three services had each declared at least 45 million monthly users in the EU, placing them above the threshold for designation as a very large online platform or search engine.
The companies will have four months from their designation to comply with the additional obligations that apply to services operating at this scale.
ChatGPT is classified as an online search engine
The classifications differ depending on how each service operates.
Reuters reported that ChatGPT qualifies as an online search engine under the Digital Services Act, while Reddit and Roblox qualify as online platforms because they allow users to disseminate third-party content to the public.
That classification makes ChatGPT’s designation especially important for the AI industry. Generative AI products are increasingly being used not only to create content but also to retrieve, summarize and present information to users.
For AI companies building products that increasingly overlap with traditional search and information-discovery tools, the designation shows how European platform rules can extend beyond social networks and conventional search engines.
Companies must assess systemic risks
The new status requires the three companies to assess and mitigate risks associated with how their services operate at scale.
According to Reuters, the obligations include addressing the dissemination of illegal content, as well as potential negative effects on minors and users’ physical and mental wellbeing.
The Economic Times also highlighted risks involving fundamental rights, electoral processes and public security, adding another layer of responsibility for companies whose products reach tens of millions of people across the bloc.
Reuters also reported that the European Commission will be able to supervise compliance and use investigative powers to examine the functionalities behind the services.
Regulation is becoming part of product architecture
For builders and product teams, the 45-million-user threshold is increasingly more than a growth milestone.
Once a platform reaches sufficient scale in Europe, engineering teams may need to think more deliberately about how safety systems, recommendation mechanisms, content controls and information-delivery features can be evaluated under regulatory scrutiny.
That matters differently across the three products. Reddit manages enormous volumes of public discussion. Roblox operates around user-created experiences and content. ChatGPT increasingly acts as an information interface capable of generating and surfacing answers directly to users.
The broader signal is that Europe’s platform rules are moving closer to the technical architecture of products themselves.
For founders and engineering leaders building AI or user-generated platforms in the EU, regulatory compliance is becoming less of a separate legal layer and more of a product-design consideration.
