alt Hacker NewsIsn't Lovable in this case more analogous to a consultancy to whom customers outsourced their website builds — meaning the customers, not Lovable are responsible for these actions?
On a larger note, and not at all to downplay the seriousness of this breach, but this feels like the kind of growing pain we're going to continue going through as we move to an AI-driven world. Who's responsible for the work of the AI? In this case, I think it's pretty cut and dry, since Lovable sells a service that _happens_ to be powered by AI (it could just as easily have been done by an outsourced team instead). But as AI gains more agency, it's going to become less and less clear…
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Those are all good questions, I think the customers' perception is that they have outsourced this but obviously they too have a responsibility (for instance: to do due diligence on the parties they do business with to make sure that they are observing their duties as controllers). One thing is certain: the data subjects are without blame and their interests have been violated substantially, the question really is what else happened to the data and that is something that nobody knows right now. But if it is true that it ended up on common crawl then that would be quite a big problem.
The controller/processor relationship is very clearly described as part of the GDPR and there is little doubt in my mind that both of these parties jointly and separately carry responsibility here.
If the consultancy delivers vulnerable software to the customer, the customer would most likely sue the consultancy for any damages they incurred. Especially if there is a maintenance contract, where the consultancy handles any security upgrades etc that are necessary.