According to a report by Germany's Handelsblatt on April 10, citing sources from the European Commission, the European Commission plans to bring OpenAI and its chatbot ChatGPT into the jurisdiction of the Digital Services Act and classify it as a "very large online search engine", thus facing stricter supervision.
Regulatory threshold: the number of users far exceeds the threshold
The Digital Services Act is an important EU regulation for large Internet platforms. It aims to ensure that platforms remove illegal content faster, make it easier for users to report such content, and strengthen the protection of young people.
The bill sets additional compliance requirements for "very large online platforms" or "very large online search engines", with a threshold of more than 45 million monthly active users in the EU.
Data previously released by OpenAI shows that in the six months to the end of September 2025, the average monthly active users of the ChatGPT search function in the EU were approximately 120.4 million, far exceeding the regulatory threshold. It is on the basis of this data that the European Commission is moving forward with the process of bringing it into a strict regulatory framework.
Regulatory Process: Final evaluation underway
According to the report, a spokesperson for the European Commission told Handelsblatt that available user data is currently being reviewed. According to the European Commission's previous statement in February, a final decision on whether ChatGPT will be designated is expected to be made in the first quarter of 2026.
Henna Virkkunen, Commissioner for Technical Sovereignty at the European Commission, has said that the designation process relies not only on a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the functionality of the service, but also on the results of consultations on member states’ positions.
Responses from all parties: OpenAI refuses to comment, committee is cautious
OpenAI declined to comment on this news. Meanwhile, Microsoft, OpenAI’s main investor, declined to comment.
The EU has previously designated Meta's WhatsApp as a "very large online platform," but that only applies to the messaging app's public channels because the law does not regulate private messaging services.
This incident marks that the European Union is extending its most stringent online governance framework to the emerging field of artificial intelligence systems, which will have a profound impact on the compliance standards of the global AI industry.