Commission checking if ChatGPT falls under EU online governance rules

The European Commission is assessing whether OpenAI’s ChatGPT has become so popular that it should be in scope of EU online governance rules which the Commission itself enforces.

On Wednesday, the developer of the AI chatbot reported average monthly EU users of 120.4 million – well beyond the 45 million user legal threshold in the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) to fall in scope of additional rules for larger platforms (so-called VLOPs).

A Commission spokesperson said it is aware that ChatGPT’s regional users have exceeded the VLOP threshold, adding during its daily briefing with reporters on Wednesday that it is “currently assessing the information”.

Large language models like ChatGPT could potentially fall in scope of DSA rules for VLOPs if their generative AI technology is integrated into a type of service or platform that can be designated, per the Commission.

Examples of digital services that may be classed as VLOPs include search engines, marketplaces, and content-sharing platforms. But the Commission spokesperson said each analysis must be done on a case-by-case basis.

The regional usage figure OpenAI publishes for ChatGPT’s EU users are specifically for ChatGPT search – meaning these are EU users of the tool’s online search feature, such as when the chatbot actively prompts a users if they want it to search the web for them and they reply yes.

A spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed to Euractiv that the reported EU usage figure is based on ChatGPT’s search capabilities only, not other uses of the model.

Search results may be displayed via ChatGPT during a conversation with a user who asks the bot to search the web or when the model proactively decides to search the web to provide a relevant response, the spokesperson also clarified.

The 120.4 million monthly EU users figure OpenAI reports for ChatGPT search is also an average that the company said was calculated over a six-month period.

(nl)