EU weighing tighter regulation for OpenAI under Digital Services Act
FILE PHOTO: OpenAI logo is seen in this illustration taken May 20, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
(Corrects to search engine instead of platform in paragraph 1)
April 10 : The European Commission on Friday said it was analysing whether OpenAI's ChatGPT should be considered a large online search engine under the rules of the Digital Services Act (DSA), after it reported user numbers above the threshold.
"OpenAI has published user numbers for ChatGPT above the 45 million DSA threshold for designation," Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said.
"The Commission services are currently assessing this information."
Regnier said Large Language Models could potentially be in the scope of the DSA, but that this had to be analysed on a "case-by-case basis."
German newspaper Handelsblatt reported earlier on Friday that ChatGPT would fall under the DSA, meaning it would face tighter regulation.
OpenAI said it had published the average number of monthly active recipients for ChatGPT search in line with existing obligations, adding this referred to users in the European Union over the past six months.
According to data supplied by OpenAI, ChatGPT search had approximately 120.4 million average monthly active users in the EU over the six-month period to end-September 2025.
(Writing by Matthias Williams and Bart Meijer, Editing by Linda Pasquini, Kirsten Donovan)
