EU mulls tougher ChatGPT rules

Brussels is weighing whether ChatGPT belongs in the same European Union bucket as the internet’s biggest platforms, after OpenAI reported user numbers above the Digital Services Act threshold. The European Commission said on April 10, 2026 that it is analysing whether ChatGPT should be treated as a large online platform under those rules. (reuters.com) That threshold is 45 million monthly users in the European Union. Once a service crosses it, the Digital Services Act moves from general platform rules to the law’s toughest layer. (digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu) The Digital Services Act is the European Union’s rulebook for online services people use every day, from marketplaces to social networks to app stores. For the biggest services, it adds stricter duties on risk checks, transparency, and outside scrutiny. (digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu, eur-lex.europa.eu) The awkward part is that ChatGPT is not a social network in the old sense. Reuters reported two versions of the same debate on April 10: one saying Brussels was testing whether ChatGPT fits the “large online platform” label, and another saying officials were analysing whether it should count as a “large online search engine.” (reuters.com, reuters.com) That classification fight matters because the European Union has already shown it will stretch old categories to cover newer products. On February 9, 2026, the Commission designated WhatsApp’s Channels feature as a very large online platform once it passed 45 million users in the bloc. (digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu) OpenAI is already dealing with a second European law at the same time. The Artificial Intelligence Act, which became Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, is the bloc’s dedicated law for artificial intelligence systems and models. (eur-lex.europa.eu, digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu) That law treats general-purpose artificial intelligence models as foundation models that can power many different products, the way an engine can sit inside many different cars. The European Commission says providers of those models face baseline duties, and the most advanced models face extra duties tied to systemic risk. (digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu) Some of those Artificial Intelligence Act duties already started on August 2, 2025 for general-purpose artificial intelligence models. The broader law becomes applicable on August 2, 2026 after a two-year transition from its August 1, 2024 entry into force. (digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu, artificialintelligenceact.eu, eur-lex.europa.eu) The penalty numbers are large enough to get every legal and engineering team’s attention. The Artificial Intelligence Act allows fines up to €35 million or 7% of worldwide annual turnover for some violations, with lower tiers for other breaches. (eur-lex.europa.eu, eur-lex.europa.eu) So OpenAI is staring at two different European questions at once. One asks whether ChatGPT is now big enough to be supervised like a giant online service, and the other asks whether its underlying artificial intelligence models meet a new law built specifically for artificial intelligence. (reuters.com, digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu, digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu) If Brussels decides ChatGPT fits under the Digital Services Act’s biggest-service category, OpenAI will not just be shipping a chatbot in Europe. It will be running a product that sits under one European Union law for giant online services and another European Union law for artificial intelligence itself. (reuters.com, digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu, digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu)