Is ChatGPT a Search Engine and a Platform under the EU Digital Services Act?

This blog highlights key arguments from the Policy Review analysis “Between search and platform: ChatGPT under the DSA”. For the full paper, read the original publication on Policy Review.

Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is a central tool for regulating online services, but as new technologies blur the lines between its key categories—platforms and search engines—some of its core assumptions are starting to show their age. ChatGPT highlights what is at stake: if hybrid AI services fall between the DSA’s categories, they may also fall outside meaningful regulatory scrutiny, despite posing risks comparable to those of the largest platforms and search engines.

How the Digital Services Act Classifies Intermediary Services

The DSA provides the European Union’s framework for governing intermediary services in the digital economy. It establishes a taxonomy and a set of obligations for different information services that mediate digital communication and the storage and transmission of online content. Within this regulatory framework, the DSA distinguishes between three primary categories of intermediary services:

1. mere conduit;
2. caching;
3. hosting services.

In addition to these core categories, the Act singles out online platforms and online search engines as services subject to specific and enhanced obligations. And while online platforms are clearly classified as a subset of hosting services, online search engines are treated as intermediary services without clear categorical placement.

We argue that online search engines should, like online platforms, be understood as a type of hosting service. This interpretation resolves a structural ambiguity in the DSA taxonomy and aligns with the Act’s references to platforms and search engines as parallel obligations-bearing services.

How Generative AI Challenges Traditional DSA Service Categories

The popularisation of generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems and, in particular, products like ChatGPT, fundamentally challenge traditional boundaries between search engines and online platforms, creating, we argue, hybrid hosting services that combine information sourcing, content generation, and user interaction in unprecedented ways. These AI services simultaneously perform search functions (through query processing and information delivery at the request of a user) while exhibiting platform-like characteristics (through custom applications or persistent conversational interfaces). 

How does ChatGPT’s Scale Affect its Classification Under the DSA?

The rapid adoption of ChatGPT, reaching over 120 million users globally within months of launch, and recently hitting the 45 million active users mark in the EU, raises questions about its designation in the DSA framework, either as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP), or a Very Large Online Search Engine (VLOSE). In fact, the DSA regulator is reportedly uncertain about how to classify ChatGPT (Datta, 2025). We propose that it is a hybrid of the two, in line with the Commission’s observation that “the two legal categories of online platform and online search engine are becoming more and more intertwined“ (European Commission, 2025). 

The central argument is that ChatGPT can be conceived as the next step in the evolution of online search engines, but with key elements akin to online platforms. 

ChatGPT as a Hybrid of VLOSE and VLOP Service Under the DSA

ChatGPT should, first, be classified as an online search engine where it enables users to submit queries in order to retrieve information from, in principle, all publicly accessible websites. The ChatGPT Search functionality meets the DSA definition of an online search engine in a straightforward manner, and, where the relevant user threshold is met, may qualify as a Very Large Online Search Engine.

We also examine whether aspects of ChatGPT’s operation absent live browsing can, under a technology-neutral interpretation, be understood as functionally analogous to search. In addition, ChatGPT’s custom GPT functionality satisfies the definitional requirements for an online platform, as it entails the storage and public dissemination of information at the request of a recipient of the service. At present, however, the scale of use of custom GPTs alone is unlikely to suffice for designation as a Very Large Online Platform.

By contrast, ordinary one-to-one conversational use clearly meets the hosting service definition, since prompts are stored at the request of users, but it does not, strictly speaking, fulfil the public dissemination criterion required for platform status. Continued monitoring of feature development remains warranted, as expanded sharing functionalities could shift the classification analysis over time. 

Systemic Risks of ChatGPT and the Case for Enhanced Regulatory Obligations

Furthermore, we explore how ChatGPT exhibits comparable systemic risk profiles to traditional VLOSEs and VLOPs across all four risk categories identified in the DSA, including (i) illegal content dissemination; (ii) fundamental rights impacts; (iii) threats to democratic processes; and (iv) public health concerns, justifying the application of enhanced regulatory obligations now that the user threshold is met. 

With this, the apparent regulatory gap between traditional service categories and emerging AI systems can be resolved, establishing a precedent for coherent oversight of an increasingly evolving number of hybrid digital services.