A post making the rounds on Facebook credited a group called "Hackers Tech" with ranking 500 AI companies on trustworthiness.
The research itself checks out. The name attached to it doesn’t. The actual source is Cybernews, whose new AI Trustworthiness Ranking 2026 scored companies across four pillars — security, data privacy, organizational transparency, and public perception — and somewhere along the way, someone swapped the branding and sent it back out into the world as their own.
Here’s the part that actually matters: Google’s Gemini came out on top. Not just among the big names — out of all 500 companies assessed. And the rest of the top five isn’t who you’d guess either. Krisp, Synthesia, Salesforce, Fireflies.ai. Ask ten people on the street which AI companies they trust most and none of them are naming Synthesia.
Among the household names, though, the gaps get wide fast. Microsoft’s Copilot landed at #18, OpenAI at #22 — respectable, but not close to the top. Meta and Anthropic ended up almost tied, at #49 and #50. Worth noting: Anthropic’s weak spot wasn’t privacy or security, it was public perception specifically. Make of that what you will. DeepSeek brought up the rear at #283, and honestly that one’s not surprising once you see why — no bug bounty program, no recognized security certification, nothing.
Zoom out to all 500 companies and a pattern shows up that’s kind of telling. Transparency was the strongest category industry-wide, averaging 90 out of 100. Security was the weakest, at just 32. So companies are generally fine telling you what they do. Whether they can actually back it up with locked-down systems is a different question, and apparently a harder one for most of them to answer.
How the score actually gets calculated
Worth knowing before you weigh any of this too heavily: the four pillars aren’t equal. Public perception and data privacy each count for 35% of the final score, security counts for 20%, and organizational transparency — the category every company is apparently great at — only counts for 10%. So a company can look strong on paper for being transparent about its policies while still landing mid-pack overall if its actual security posture or public reputation is shaky. It’s also worth remembering the ranking only measures what’s publicly visible — clear policies and disclosures, not confirmed internal practices or a clean incident history.
Why this matters if you’re picking a tool
If you’re choosing between AI platforms for personal or work use, this ranking is a decent gut-check but not the whole picture. A high score means a company is upfront about what it does with your data and has the basics covered — bug bounty programs, security certifications, a real privacy policy. It doesn’t guarantee nothing will ever go wrong. Worth treating it as one input, not a verdict.
Your turn
Where does your go-to AI tool land on this list — and does the ranking match how much you actually trust it? Drop your pick in the comments; curious whether the numbers here match what people are actually using day to day.