// this week in AI

This week in AI: Europe declares ChatGPT a search engine

By Trinity · MariVisionSeptember 4, 20267 min read
Ale from MariVision in a vast nighttime newsroom, in front of a curved wall of glowing holographic news panels
2026 · 09 · 04 — THIS WEEK IN AIEurope declares ChatGPT a search engine

This week artificial intelligence left the tech news page and entered three far more concrete places: the official register of European rules, an Italian public funding call worth two hundred million, and the monthly bill of anyone who uses it. In between, a Google update that wiped a larger-than-usual slice of websites off the first page, with AI-written content published without a second read among its declared targets. Five stories, all with a verifiable source at the bottom, all with the same question in mind: what does it change for me?

1 · Europe declares ChatGPT a search engine

Deserted European parliament chamber at night with a large holographic search bar hanging in the air and the circle of stars projected on the floor

On August 31, the European Commission designated ChatGPT a “very large online search engine” under the Digital Services Act. It's the first time an artificial intelligence service has landed in that category, which until yesterday held Google and Bing. The threshold for inclusion is 45 million average monthly users in the Union: ChatGPT has declared about 160 million, more than triple. Reddit and Roblox were designated in the same round.

The detail that matters most of all is the criterion: the designation doesn't come because ChatGPT is an AI, but because it searches the live web. It's a yardstick based on function, not on the label, which is why it can apply tomorrow to Gemini, Claude or Perplexity once they reach the same numbers. Serious obligations for OpenAI follow from it: systemic risk assessments, extended procedures for complaints, blocking and appeals, dispute-resolution mechanisms and Trusted Flaggers, under the direct supervision of the Commission. The deadline to comply runs until December.

Why it matters to you: in Europe there's now a second search engine recognized as such, and your customers are already searching it for what you sell. Getting found is no longer just a matter of ranking on Google: it's showing up in the answers, with a website the AI can read and cite. If you have no idea how yours is doing, start with a free SEO analysis of your site and look at the numbers before deciding. And if something of yours gets blocked or flagged, there's now a formal procedure to complain, which until yesterday didn't exist.

2 · Google Pics: the graphic design is written in words

Dark design studio with enormous suspended canvases, one of which fills up with a glowing holographic poster

On September 1, Google unveiled Pics, its answer to Canva. The difference lies entirely in the opening gesture: you don't open a blank canvas and drag elements around, you describe in words what you need. The tool isolates and transforms objects inside an image, edits or translates the text written inside it, generates several versions of the same graphic and lets two people work on it together. It starts inside Docs and Slides, with the extension to Drive already announced.

It's not free, and that needs saying right away: you need a Google Workspace account or a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription. The interesting part, though, is right there — for a good number of small businesses that subscription is already in the house, paid for months for email and documents, and nobody has looked at what's inside. Text translation inside images, in particular, is the feature that solves a tedious, repetitive job for anyone selling abroad: the same flyer in four languages without redoing the design four times.

Why it matters to you: it's the everyday graphics of a small business — posts, flyers, price-list images, product sheets — that stop requiring a program to learn or a quote to request. Before activating yet another monthly subscription, open the list of the ones you already pay for and look at what they include now: over the past year almost all of them added AI tools without raising the price, and almost nobody noticed.

3 · SIMEST: €200 million for AI in SMEs, from September 21

Large nighttime bank hall with marble columns and a holographic vault door opening to pour out golden light

This is the story with real money in it. SIMEST, together with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and CDP, has launched a €200 million measure under the 394/1981 revolving fund dedicated to artificial intelligence (and quantum technology) investments by Italian SMEs. Applications open on September 21, 2026. The form is the classic one of Fund 394: subsidized financing for up to 8 years, an advance of up to 50% of the amounts granted, and a non-repayable grant of 10% of the intervention.

The point that really moves the needle is another one, and it's hidden in the requirements: the export threshold drops to 3% of revenue, instead of the 10% the Fund normally requires. And subcontractors can get in too, if they direct at least 10% of their revenue to exporting customers who meet that threshold. Translated: quite a few small Italian businesses that always considered themselves outside the “international” perimeter are now inside it. Eligible expenses cover the development, adoption and integration of AI solutions into business processes — not buying a subscription, but a project.

Why it matters to you: if you have a serious AI project in mind — a management system that sorts on its own, a system that reads incoming documents, a warehouse automation — the time to talk to your accountant about it is this week, not October: applications open in three weeks and these funds don't wait for latecomers. The part to prepare beforehand is always the same: what you want to achieve, on which process, with which numbers. That's exactly the scope of AI consulting for SMEs, and it's needed anyway, funding or no funding.

4 · Claude Fable 5.1: the bill drops by 25%

Immense nighttime data center seen in depth, with a large glowing arrow curving downward above the corridor

Also on September 1, Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1, available immediately on all platforms. They're the same model with different safeguards: Fable 5.1 is the one open to everyone, Mythos 5.1 remains reserved for controlled-access programs in cybersecurity and life sciences. On technical work the leap over the previous version is there, but that's not the interesting news for anyone running a business.

The news is the price. Fable 5.1 costs about 25% less than its predecessor on typical workloads, and up to 45% less on heavily agentic work — where the model works on its own through a long chain of steps — thanks to a 75% cut in the cost of cache reads. It's the second time in a few months that the price per unit of work has gone down instead of up, and it confirms a direction: the power grows and the cost of running it falls.

Why it matters to you: if you pay per use for an automation, an assistant or a chatbot, the bill goes down without you doing anything — on one condition, that the tools are actually using the new version. Many stay pinned to the old model until someone changes a line of configuration, and in the meantime you pay the old price. It's a five-minute check worth months of savings, and it's worth putting on the calendar every time a version comes out: well-built AI automation for your business gets updated, not rebuilt.

5 · August spam update: one page in six is out of the game

Deserted stadium at night with an enormous holographic leaderboard from which a few glowing rows break away and fall into the dark

The data on the spam update Google rolled out from August 18 to 21 is out, and it's heavier than average. According to SE Ranking's analysis, 16.71% of the URLs that were on the first page ended up beyond position 100, compared with 9.2% in a July period with no update in progress: an 82% increase, meaning a top-10 page was 1.8 times more likely than usual to vanish off the radar. Volatility hit all twenty monitored sectors, with fashion and beauty leading at 85.55%.

Independent studies on real cases point to mass-produced content abuse, AI-generated texts published in bulk and thin affiliate pages among the targets. Be careful to read it right, though, because the misunderstanding is just around the corner: the criterion isn't “AI yes / AI no.” Google has never penalized the tool you write with; it penalizes pages that add nothing to what's already online. An article written with AI, reread, corrected and enriched with your experience is a good page. Thirty articles churned out in an afternoon and published without looking at them are thirty pages of noise.

Why it matters to you: open Search Console and look at organic traffic from August 18 onward. If there's a sharp step down, it's not seasonality, it's this. The fix isn't deleting everything: it's picking the pages that are worth it, rewriting them with something only you can say — a case, a price, a mistake you made — and clearing out the rest. If instead there's no step, you've just found out you're working the right way, and the most useful thing is not to change it. You'll also find the method in the SEO consulting we do for clients: fewer pages, each with a reason to exist.

In short

Europe has put ChatGPT in the same category as Google and from December demands the same guarantees, Google has brought graphic design into Docs and Slides where you drive it with words, SIMEST opens €200 million for AI in SMEs from September 21 with the export threshold lowered to 3%, Claude Fable 5.1 cuts the bill by a quarter, and the August spam update knocked one page in six off the first page. The thread holding them together is that this week AI stopped being a promise and started behaving like infrastructure: regulated, funded, measured to the cent. If you do just two things this week, do these: look at organic traffic from August 18 onward, and open the list of subscriptions you pay for to see what they've put inside without telling you.

Sources: heise online (ChatGPT's VLOSE designation) · Business Standard (what the EU label entails) · TechCrunch (Google Pics) · SIMEST (the €200 million measure) · Tom's Hardware (requirements and dates of the call) · Anthropic (Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1) · TechCrunch (the price cut) · Search Engine Land (the spam update's impact) · GSQi (case studies on the update).

Frequently asked questions

Why did Europe classify ChatGPT as a search engine?

On August 31, the European Commission designated it a “very large online search engine” under the Digital Services Act, because it searches the web live and exceeds the threshold of 45 million monthly users in the EU: it declared about 160 million. For you, getting found now also means showing up in its answers.

How does SIMEST's €200 million program for AI in SMEs work?

It's a measure under Fund 394/1981 for AI investments by Italian SMEs, with applications from September 21, 2026: subsidized financing for up to 8 years, an advance of up to 50% and a 10% non-repayable grant. The export threshold drops to 3% of revenue, and subcontractors can apply too. It funds a project, not a subscription.

How do I know if my site was hit by Google's August spam update?

Open Search Console and look at organic traffic since August 18: if there's a sharp step down, it's not seasonality. The update pushed 16.71% of first-page URLs beyond position 100, hitting AI text published in bulk and thin affiliate pages. You fix it by rewriting the pages that matter with something only you can say.

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