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What ChatGPT’s DSA Designation Means for OpenAI and the EU

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The Google Ad Tech Remedies Matter to You, Too

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Without a Child Rights Framework, Meta’s $17.1bn Settlement Will Only Go So Far

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Can the EU AI Act’s Transparency Rules Strengthen Democratic Resilience?

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Germany’s Federal Chancellery building on July 19, 2025 (Photo by Michael Nguyen/NurPhoto) 

What Germany's AI Security Institute Could Learn From Other Countries

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The workers shown are laboring on automobile assembly lines, likely at the Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge Plant.

Rivera celebrated the dignity and effort of industrial labor, portraying the workers with strength and unity.

The style is Social Realism, characterized by its focus on working-class subjects and its detailed, lifelike forms.

Photograph of a detail of a 1933 Diego Rivera fresco at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Justin Hendrix/Tech Policy Press

A Labor Day Prescription for Preserving Fair Employment in the Digital Age

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Members of California's legal team leave court after a settlement was reached in a multi-state lawsuit accusing Meta of causing harm to children on social media outside the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building and US Courthouse on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

August 2026 US Tech Policy Roundup

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What 12 State ‘Companion Bot’ Laws Demand of AI Providers

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Amritha R Warrier & AI4Media / Better Images of AI / tic tac toe / CC-BY 4.0

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Deborah Lupton, "Servers in a Landscape" / 

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Meta Owes the Rest of the World Its Teen Protections

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Make AI Companies Criminally Liable for Preventable Harm

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The EU and US Can’t Agree on Tech — or Trust

Lisa Macpherson is policy director at Public Knowledge.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Virginia issued 

 on remedies in the Google ad-tech antitrust case. I’m disappointed in the order, and you should be, too.

Yes, you, even if you’re not a policy wonk like me. In the fall of 2024, I wrote 

 explaining why, despite all its legal complexities, the Google ad tech case matters for everyone. Leveraging my own ringside seat to the development and evolution of digital advertising since the 1990’s, I made the case that “Google’s dominant control of the advertising technology market has hurt advertisers and publishers… but also consumers – by imposing on privacy, fueling disinformation, reducing the diversity of viewpoints online, increasing barriers to news, reducing innovation by brands, and increasing prices on goods and services.” Judge Leonie Brinkema’s remedies order means Google’s dominant control of the advertising technology market will continue – and so, likely, will its detrimental impacts.

Google is an illegal monopolist in advertising technology. That was Judge Brinkema’s decision in her 

 filed by the US Department of Justice and several states in 2023. The ruling confirmed that Google’s acquisitions and consolidation of the so-called ad tech stack – the layers of software that broker and execute advertising buys by advertisers from publishers – into its Ad Exchange (AdX) represented anti-competitive behavior, and that the consolidation allowed other anti-competitive behaviors like tying, self-preferencing, and price manipulation. To compensate for these effects, advertisers needed to pay more for ads (even while losing visibility to whether or where they ran), and publishers needed to build higher paywalls to sustain their business. We 

Judge Brinkema’s new ruling does not force Google to sell AdX, or make any structural changes, for that matter (note: the full decision remains under seal). Google will still own both its ad server and the exchange and the conflict of interest they entail. Instead, the decision changes how the exchange can operate its auctions. Assuming the actual remedies include robust enforcement mechanisms, the best it will do is reduce some of Google’s advantages in visibility, access, and leverage over publishers’ inventory or pricing.

 before it, how slow and uncertain litigation can be to solve for anti-competitive behaviors on the part of multi-trillion-dollar corporations operating in dynamic marketplaces. We need more than that. For example, the 

American Innovation and Choice Online Act

 (AICOA), reintroduced in the Senate this past June, would ban dominant platforms from engaging in anti-competitive behaviors like self-preferencing, tying, and using private data, and it would require interoperability and data portability across platforms. The Advertising Middlemen Endangering Rigorous Internet Competition Accountability Act (

, reintroduced in the Senate in 2025, is even more specifically aimed at the ad tech market; among other provisions, it prohibits dominant firms from owning more than one part of the ad-buying and selling process (such as owning both an ad exchange and a publisher tool). And we need a 

 to account for changes in the marketplace in the future.

, “We need to open up digital markets to bring about more competition and more choice if we want an advertising system that works for the rest of us.” This decision, based on what we know today, does little to ensure that.

 OpenAI’s ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine (VLOSE), placing the chatbot under the Digital Services Act's (DSA) most stringent tier of obligations. This decision was long in the making – in fact, we explored different options for how the EC could do this in 

This designation could have far-reaching implications, both for frontier labs' products and for the EU's own rulebook. Many of the questions it raises will only be answered as the Commission's supervision unfolds over the coming months.

The decision confirms the DSA's technological neutrality, or at least its ability to bring new kinds of services, ones that didn't exist when it was drafted, within scope.

One of our arguments for treating ChatGPT as a VLOSE in 2023 rested on Article 3(j) DSA, which defines a search engine as a service that lets users search “in principle, all websites.” At the time, ChatGPT was about to launch a version with web access, giving it exactly that capability. Since then, the search function has been fully integrated into the product, can even be set as a browser’s default one, and both the Commission and OpenAI’s own DSA transparency 

 have treated ChatGPT as subject to the general obligations for online search engines since 2024. ChatGPT’s search function will now be subject to the DSA’s due diligence obligations: risk assessments, mitigation measures, independent audits, data access, and transparency reporting.

 are only a slice of ChatGPT's user base in the EU. Impressive as those numbers are, they aren't how most people actually experience ChatGPT. The chat interface that lets users interact with the model does not necessarily search the web, which makes ChatGPT what the Commission calls a "hybrid service.” The designation decision does not appear to separate out ChatGPT’s different functionalities, which is consistent with how other VLOP designations have worked: Snapchat, for instance, was designated for its social networking component, not its messaging service.

Whether the chat function will ever be designated in its own right, and if so how, remains to be seen. Under Article 34(1), OpenAI must assess risks stemming from the design or functioning of its service and its 

, and there is a case to be made that the chat function qualifies as such a “related system” in its own right.

But even if that argument doesn’t hold, Article 34 DSA still gives us the opportunity to look under the hood of ChatGPT more broadly. How a general-purpose AI model is designed and used, from training data to output ranking, directly affects the quality, inclusivity, and reliability of the information it puts in front of millions of users. Recital 84 DSA points specifically to algorithmic amplification and curation as a driver of systemic risk, which maps directly onto how ChatGPT selects, ranks, and cites sources. That lens will matter most for risks like negative effects on democratic processes, civic discourse and electoral processes, as well as public security, public health, minors, and mental well-being.

Media pluralism is expressly named as its own systemic risk category, under Article 34(1)(b). The risk assessment should therefore also cover how ChatGPT’s citation and sourcing behavior affects publisher visibility, a question that is not specific to OpenAI. 

 is already using its Article 40(4) vetted-researcher access to investigate whether Google’s AI Overviews are undermining media pluralism by displacing clicks to news sites.

That is another advantage of ChatGPT’s VLOSE designation: it brings OpenAI within the Article 40 data access framework, giving outside researchers the tools to run the same kind of investigation. Vetted researchers can request data under Article 40(4) for research that contributes to detecting and understanding systemic risks under Article 34(1), and to assessing the adequacy of OpenAI’s mitigation measures under Article 35. Article 40(12) goes further, giving non-vetted researchers, including those affiliated with nonprofits, a right to whatever data is publicly accessible on ChatGPT’s interface.

The timing is notable on another front too: the designation lands just weeks after OpenAI 

 that advertisers will be able to place ads within ChatGPT across Europe. OpenAI will now have to account for its advertising system in its risk assessment and publish an ad repository under Article 39.

These obligations will only start applying in January 2027, but it’s worth asking what comes next. The DMA does not treat generative AI as a core platform service, but it does regulate online search engines, and now that the Commission has designated ChatGPT as a very large online search engine under the DSA, a gatekeeper designation under the DMA no longer looks far-fetched, provided OpenAI meets the relevant qualitative and quantitative thresholds. That would be a heavier test than the one it has just passed.

Meta’s $17.1 billion settlement with a California court

, in recognition of its impact on the mental health of children, has ricocheted around the world and generated heated debate.

The case has led to much public comment about the power and (lack of) accountability of Big Tech, children and social media, mental health and addiction. Some are even 

 social media’s “Big Tobacco Moment.”

But almost nothing about the discourse and analysis addresses the settlement through the lens of child rights or the human rights responsibilities of companies. Yet, focusing on children’s rights to protections and on company responsibilities to protect children’s rights is key not only to understanding the significance of the case but to identifying what needs to be done — not just by Meta and not just in the United States — to protect child users of tech platforms and social media around the world.

Human and child rights serve as a universal standard for all peoples and nations and companies. They offer an internationally recognized standard for guiding company decision-making rather than more contested concepts of ethics, democratic values, safety, and responsibility, or settlements achieved in courts in different jurisdictions. 

 is the most ratified and universally recognized of all the human rights treaties; ironically, the United States is the only government not to have ratified it. And though it was adopted more than 30 years ago, long before the digital age, its commitment to children’s rights to health as well as the “development of appropriate guidelines for the protection of the child from information and material injurious to his or her well-being” makes it a very relevant standard.

The question of how companies should embed respect for human rights into their decision-making has evolved significantly over the last two decades. The 

United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

 (UNGPs) apply to companies across all industries and provide an authoritative global standard for preventing and addressing the risk of adverse human rights impacts caused, contributed by and linked to business activity. 

In the context of social media and technology platforms, the UNGPs establish normative standards that can and must guide company action about how they respect the rights of child users. And, in addition to defining company responsibilities, the UNGPs define the obligations of governments to set and enforce standards to ensure that companies live up to those responsibilities to protect children.

What does a business and human rights framing bring to the Meta settlement?

The framing has several important implications. Firstly, and absolutely fundamentally, children's rights are universal and transcend borders and nationalities. A child-rights framework provides a basis for asking what companies owe to children as rights-holders irrespective of where they live. Thus, while this settlement relates only to children in the US, companies' measures to protect children's rights must extend beyond the US to cover children around the world.

It is simply unconscionable that companies acknowledge the harms to children globally but only address them in one country. As Nighat Dad of the Meta Oversight Board 

, “The settlement Meta signed protects teenagers in participating US states. The exclusion of everywhere else is a choice. Meta can make a different one.”

Second, the implications should extend beyond Meta. The issues raised by the settlement and the recognition of the harms to children and other users must be recognized by all relevant companies. All social media companies should be affirming their recognition of their responsibilities through a human rights policy or statement that makes an explicit commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UNGPs.

And while Meta’s call on other tech companies to do more to protect child rights is fair, its 

 on conditioning 30% of the settlement on actions to be taken by YouTube and TikTok is, from a child rights perspective, unacceptable.

Companies cannot negotiate their human rights responsibilities on the basis of the conduct of their competitors. A company's responsibility to respect human rights does not become conditional on whether another company does the same.

Third, the settlement reminds us of the limitations of voluntary human rights commitments. Meta has had a 

 which includes an explicit commitment to the UNGPs and the Convention on the Rights of the Child since 2021. That commitment did not prevent the harms now being addressed through litigation and settlement. While voluntary due diligence is hugely important and something to be advocated for, it cannot replace the impact of regulatory frameworks and enforceable legal standards.

At the same time, the settlement reinforces the importance of human rights due diligence to prevent or mitigate risks and harms. Many of the commitments made by Meta to protect children’s health and rights are those that experts and advocates have long been calling for. But it’s vital that the proposed new design features undergo child rights due diligence before deployment to assess risks and prevent or mitigate possible harms. The UNGPs require companies to treat human rights due diligence not as a compliance check after a product or policy is launched, but as a process integrated into the earliest stages of planning and development to prevent harm from occurring. 

All the measures currently being proposed by Meta must be tested and assessed through the lens of child rights and the key principles set out by the 

: non-discrimination; best interests of the child; right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child as well as the evolving capacity of the child.

And, under the critical principle of “know and show”, companies must 

 to individuals or groups who may be impacted — in this case children and their parents — and other relevant stakeholders, including investors, what risks they have identified and what measures they are taking to address them. Information provided must be in a form appropriate to the company's human rights impacts, accessible to its intended audiences and contain enough information for people to evaluate the adequacy of the company's response.

Fifth, children must have a meaningful voice in the process. The UNGPs make it clear, in Principle 18, that human rights due diligence demands “meaningful consultation with potentially affected groups and other relevant stakeholders.”

It will be vital to ensure that child rights due diligence involves engagement with children and their parents and caregivers, especially those who are particularly vulnerable to harms, including those with disabilities, LGBTQ+ children, those belonging to racial and religious minorities and others, around the world.

In the last two years, many tech company trust and safety teams 

 as companies redirected much of their expenditure towards AI development and aligned themselves with the priorities of the Trump administration and its anti-rights and anti-regulatory posture.

As Irene Khan, former UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression, pointed out in her 2025 report, 

Threats to Freedom of Expression Online in These Turbulent Times

, “most “Big Tech” companies based in the United States have aligned their policies and positions with that of its Government, rolling back their promises of safety online.”

If tech companies are to take their obligation to due diligence seriously, consultation with children and their families, transparency, and ongoing monitoring, staffing levels and expertise must be reassessed to ensure that the company has the capacity to implement its child rights responsibilities effectively.

Criticizing Big Tech is currently very fashionable and a la mode. And there are lots of good reasons to do so. But 

 that all the actions being proposed to regulate tech companies are legitimate through a human rights lens.

Meta’s settlement may, in time, come to be seen as a pragmatic and cynical compromise to protect long-term profits or a real opportunity to create lasting change for children. Much will depend on whether human rights lie at the heart of the response. Maintaining a 

 will be essential to ensure that tech companies are striving to enable children to exercise their rights as well as be protected from harms and risks.

Since August 2, providers and deployers of certain AI systems have 

 to disclose AI interactions, mark AI-generated or manipulated content, and label certain deepfakes and AI-generated text on matters of public interest. The 

 the rules are intended to reduce deception and manipulation and strengthen the integrity of Europe’s information environment.

The moment comes against a backdrop of concerns about 

 in Europe. As European democracies face risks from foreign interference, internal political divisions, and rapidly evolving AI systems, the newly enforceable AI Act provisions can strengthen transparency, accountability, and institutional readiness, but they cannot by themselves address the broader threats facing European democracies. The question, therefore, is whether greater transparency actually translates into greater democratic resilience.

Several regulatory developments are noteworthy. First, 

Article 50's transparency rules took effect

. Providers of certain AI systems must ensure that people are informed when they interact directly with an AI system, while providers of systems that generate or manipulate synthetic content must ensure that outputs are marked in a machine-readable format where required. Deployers have separate obligations concerning the disclosure of deepfakes and AI-generated public-interest text. These obligations come with several exceptions, however. They include law enforcement use, minor editorial assistance, artistic or satirical works, and content that has undergone human review with clear editorial responsibility.

Second, the AI Office gained full enforcement powers over general-purpose AI (GPAI) providers. Although the GPAI obligations had already applied 

, full enforcement by the Commission did not start until August 2. Third, Article 4’s 

, which has applied since February 2025, entered a new phase of supervision and enforcement. The provision requires providers and deployers to take measures to ensure a sufficient level of AI literacy among staff and others using AI systems on their behalf, taking into account their technical knowledge, experience, education, and the context in which the systems are used.

For democratic resilience, however, three aspects of this implementation deserve particular attention: transparency, accountability, and institutional readiness.

Where the newly enforceable rules can help

First, newly applicable rules can strengthen transparency. Democracy is built on the principle that political power stems from the informed 

 of the governed. Without the ability to tell what they are looking at, voters cannot meaningfully analyze information, judge leadership, or hold power accountable. Article 50 and the GPAI provisions aim to prevent citizens from being deceived by synthetic media by requiring machine-readable marking of AI-generated content, mandatory disclosure of AI interaction, and documentation from GPAI providers. In doing so, the rules also aim to preserve institutional trust: citizens who stop believing what they see are citizens who may disengage from democratic participation altogether, or lean toward leaders who promise order over truth.

 of watermarking highlights both the promise and the limits of this approach. Honoring its commitment under the EU's Code of Practice on Transparency, Anthropic started embedding an invisible watermark in text generated by Claude models released after August 2, alongside provenance metadata attached to supported files. On the one hand, a positive aspect is that the new technology was rolled out globally rather than being limited to EU users.

On the other hand, watermarking only addresses the initial generation phase. The watermark remains vulnerable throughout a much longer lifecycle spanning distribution, modification, detection, and human interpretation. Anthropic itself 

 that the absence of a watermark doesn't guarantee content wasn't AI-generated. Indeed, a screenshot, format conversion, or simple file re-save suffice to break the chain of provenance. Article 50 therefore targets a single point in the chain, but democratic resilience depends on what endures through several such points.

, an essential element of democracy as it ensures that power faces consequences for its actions. The GPAI provisions require providers to document training content, adopt copyright-compliant practices, and maintain risk-management records that the AI Office has the authority to request and assess. Although this does not prevent harm directly, it creates the documentation that is necessary for any enforcement.

Third, the rules contribute to institutional readiness. The latter is necessary to prevent judges, police officers, or civil servants from accepting algorithmic outputs as absolute truth, for instance, when setting bail. Training staff to understand a system's capabilities and limitations helps maintain human oversight that might otherwise default to machines. Article 4's literacy obligation, in force since 2025, pushes public bodies, campaigns, and newsrooms to achieve a baseline competence in spotting AI-generated content. While this might seem to be a small detail, transparency and accountability fail without institutional readiness: an official who is not aware of a disclosure requirement will not enforce it.

While the AI Act introduces essential regulatory guardrails, loopholes remain that will likely limit its effectiveness in safeguarding democracy.

To begin with, some actors will likely remain indifferent to the AI Act regardless of fines. Much of the disinformation targeting European democracies originates from 

. The foreign states are beyond the AI Act's jurisdiction and thus cannot be deterred directly. Its impact is instead indirect: constraining the commercial platforms, generative tools, and distribution channels used by foreign actors. Whether this indirect pressure actually limits state-backed operations, which can rely on non-compliant tools, remains an open question.

The AI Act also regulates companies placing systems on the EU market. However, it has almost no practical reach over a malicious actor running a modified, open-weight model on private infrastructure. Such an actor can generate harmful content entirely outside any provider's oversight and never trigger the newly enforceable rules.

A related problem is laundering. A bad actor can upload an illegal deepfake first on an unmonitored app like Telegram, where copying and screenshotting strip any hidden tracking data before regular users share it further. By the time the fake reaches major platforms, detection becomes more challenging, and Article 50's watermarking requirement offers little protection, since its markers were likely erased well before the content reached regulated platforms.

Mandatory labeling can also create an unintended defense. Bad actors can dismiss genuine footage simply by claiming it lacks a watermark or looks altered. This will help turn a tool built to expose fakes into one that helps deny reality. Should these tactics become popular, it will strike at the heart of democratic accountability. Indeed, if voters cannot agree on basic facts, how can they vote on an informed basis or hold leaders responsible?

Finally, the newly enforceable provisions do not address deeper societal problems like political polarization and declining institutional trust. People may choose to believe fake content or ignore official warnings no matter how prominently they are displayed. While the AI Act regulates how AI content is generated, it says nothing about why people are inclined to believe fakes in the first place.

Given these limits, strengthening democratic resilience further requires tools beyond the AI Act. 

 is the most obvious complement. Where the AI Act addresses content generation, the DSA targets the algorithms that amplify it, and can force major platforms to detect and restrict viral fake media regardless of its origin. The mechanism works when it has teeth: once ChatGPT crossed the 45-million EU user threshold, 

 as a Very Large Online Search Engine, subjecting it to the DSA’s strictest rules. But the DSA has its own limits. Telegram, by contrast, has reported staying just below that threshold for over two years despite EU scrutiny, 

 the heightened obligations around detecting and mitigating coordinated manipulation.

Technical improvement would also help. Anthropic’s acknowledgment that provenance information can be lost or circumvented illustrates the need for more robust and interoperable approaches to content provenance. Greater harmonization of marking standards across platforms and file formats could make it harder for provenance information to disappear as content moves through the information ecosystem.

Beyond technology, institutions matter. Election commissions need the capacity to respond swiftly to AI-enabled incidents during active campaigns rather than through retroactive investigations; media literacy efforts should extend beyond Article 4's scope to reach the wider public; and allied democracies would benefit from closer coordination against the shared threat posed by state actors seeking to undermine their political systems.

The newly applicable provisions of the EU AI Act could strengthen democratic resilience, but their impact should not be measured simply by how much AI-generated content receives a label.

The more important question is what happens after that label appears. If provenance information survives distribution, if platforms and institutions can interpret it, if journalists and election authorities can act on it, and if citizens trust and understand the signals they receive, greater transparency can contribute meaningfully to democratic resilience.

However, some actors will never comply voluntarily, and no labeling regime can eliminate political manipulation, polarization, or declining institutional trust.

The AI Act therefore should be understood as one layer of a broader resilience strategy. It needs to work alongside the DSA and other measures aimed at platform governance, election security, media literacy, technical provenance, and institutional capacity.

Ultimately, the AI Act can make synthetic content easier to identify. Whether that makes European democracies more resilient will depend on what governments, platforms, institutions, journalists, and citizens are able to do with that information.

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