Brussels has moved the spotlight from tech giants to a new class of services: the AI assistant ChatGPT and two user-driven platforms, Reddit and Roblox, have been designated "very large" under the EU's Digital Services Act after declaring they reach the 45 million monthly-user threshold.
The designation brings extra duties. The services must assess and mitigate risks tied to the spread of illegal content, and address harms to minors as well as risks to users' physical and mental wellbeing. They are also expected to limit threats to fundamental rights, electoral processes and public security, the Commission said.
Practical consequences begin quickly: the three companies have four months to put the additional protections and processes in place. The Commission will be able to supervise compliance and use investigative powers to examine the functionalities behind the services.
The DSA classification treats ChatGPT as an online search engine and Reddit and Roblox as online platforms, reflecting the blunt fact that an AI assistant that answers prompts can fall into the same regulatory bucket as conventional search services. For users, that means the ChatGPT product will face the same scrutiny over information flows and systemic risks that other major search services already face.
For Reddit and Roblox the move lands amid operational strains the platforms have been managing: Reddit's recent push into commerce and tighter moderator enforcement of promotional or coordinated posts has raised questions about how forum content is surfaced and reused; Roblox combines social interaction with user-created experiences and has its own child-safety obligations. The DSA designation makes those business and community trade-offs a regulatory issue, not just an internal policy decision.
This is not a paperwork exercise alone. The Commission's supervisory and investigative remit gives regulators a route to probe algorithms and platform features, and the four-month deadline sets a clear near-term test of how these large, public-facing services will change product behaviour and safety practices.
