OpenAI employee arrested after hidden recording device found in headquarters
An OpenAI employee has been arrested after an encrypted recording device was allegedly hidden in an executive meeting room at the company's San Francisco headquarters.
An OpenAI employee has been arrested after a sophisticated recording device was allegedly hidden in a conference room at the company's headquarters in San Francisco.
The AI firm said it discovered the device and used one of its own models to help determine where it came from before identifying an employee who had allegedly planted it several days earlier.
The employee, 35-year-old Saudi national Abdulrahman Alfozan, was arrested on October 9, according to the US Department of Justice.
The FBI alleges Alfozan concealed an encrypted recording device inside toilet paper before plugging it into a television in an executive conference room on September 28.
Meetings held in the room regularly involved confidential information, according to the indictment.
A security sweep two days later uncovered the device, while surveillance footage allegedly showed Alfozan entering and moving around the meeting room in the days beforehand.
According to the indictment, Alfozan also submitted prompts to an AI chatbot seeking information about OpenAI's internal operations, including building addresses, meeting rooms, room capacities, calendars and the locations of executives.
His spouse allegedly used the same chatbot account to ask about building and customising a continuous audio recorder, Wi-Fi connectivity, live listening and encrypting an SD card.
FBI agents searching a bag allegedly left unattended by Alfozan at OpenAI found a second identical recording device, the indictment says.
OpenAI said it had found no evidence that the employee accessed or extracted model weights, source code or customer data.
The company said the employee had been terminated and that it had referred the matter to the FBI.
OpenAI said: "We take protecting our technology, data, and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance."
The company added that its security programme was designed to protect against threats ranging from insider risks and cybercriminals to nation states, and said the case demonstrated how AI could help investigate sophisticated security threats.
If convicted, Alfozan faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
He has not publicly commented on the allegations.
The incident comes amid growing scrutiny of OpenAI's security practices.
The company has faced several incidents involving AI agents behaving unexpectedly, including systems accessing Australian government infrastructure and hacking the developer platform Hugging Face.
OpenAI has also faced internal tensions over safety.
David Robinson, a former safety leader, recently resigned and described the company's culture as "broken", while chief executive Sam Altman has argued that society should accept some risks from AI in return for its potential benefits.
