HACKER Q&A
📣 sam_lowry_

If OpenAI hacked HuggingFace, why aren't OpenAI prosecuted?


Hugging Face put up a blogpost saying that they reported the hacking to the authorities: https://huggingface.co/blog/security-incident-july-2026

It's not clear whether they mean authorities for their US HQ or the French authorities.

But I can't find any announcement of the follow-up. Is there a case open against OpenAI the company? Is their management interviewed by the authorities? Anyone detained yet?

I guess the people who left the model running unattended risk at least a suspended sentence here in France.

Where are concerned citizens making inquiries on this matter and reporting in their viral blogposts?

  👤 elp Accepted Answer ✓
They aren't getting prosecuted because everyone involved has made nice and turned it into a marketing exercise.

I heard about it on the radio (local Johannesburg radio station) before I saw it on HN. The economist had a full article up about it before the end of the day, and in the evening Sky news had talking heads up chatting about what it all meant while clearly being clueless.

Someone spent a LOT of money to turn this into a PR exercise for both companies. We'll never hear the entire story about what happened but I'm sure there was a lot of handshaking going on behind the scenes.

👤 saidnooneever
it might be possible to report it as an incident but not as a crime. unsure about France but i can imagine there is a distinction.

depending then on openai response and hugging faces reported severity/damages etc it could go further to a settlement or court.

since in France i think u cannot sue like in the US, it might not be appealing to pursue further legal action due to involved costs/time.

Also its unlikely an engineer would get penalty unless it can be proven they did it with malicious intent. If its an operational mistake afaik if there is no huge damage or human cost (injury or worse) then it would be a business / executives thing not a workerbee problem

👤 eckelj
That's an interesting point. I found the narrative - or at least what and how it was closed - interesting. The questions is all about the responsibility and accountability. Is there a clear legislation about who is responsible for the actions of the AI model in the US?

My assumption is no (but I am no expert in US law with regards to this). It would in any case become a very expensive law suite.

👤 FrankWilhoit
Just as there is "too big to fail", there is "too big to prosecute".
👤 tdu01
It's surreal that we (media, govt, public, AI companies) are in awe of how dangerous a model can be how much it can misbehave. We seem to be measuring AI on how much harm it can do rather than how much good it can do.