WASHINGTON (AP) — An engineer at OpenAI was accused of secretly installing a recording device in a conference room in what officials said Tuesday was an attempt to capture sensitive conversations on business technology.
The employee, identified as a 35-year-old Saudi national named Abdulrahman Alfozan, was arrested on Friday, a week later the creator of ChatGPT discovered a hidden audio recording device in a corporate conference room, according to a criminal complaint filed in San Francisco federal court.
The complaint did not identify the company, but the company confirmed in a separate statement that it discovered a “sophisticated recording device hidden in one of our offices,” reported the discovery to the FBI and fired the employee.
“We used our models to understand the device and its origin, identifying that a specific employee had installed it days earlier. We referred the matter to the FBI and are grateful to the agents and prosecutors who acted quickly to make an arrest. The FBI’s investigation is ongoing and we will continue to support their work,” an OpenAI spokesperson said.
“At this time, we have no indication that this individual inappropriately accessed or exfiltrated model weights, source code, or customer data. The employee has been terminated,” the statement said.
The complaint does not detail what Alfozan may have intended to do with the captured communications, but the company said the device was sophisticated, designed to evade detection and had advanced encryption and audio surveillance capabilities. OpenAI said it had evidence that the employee planned to place other listening devices in other parts of the office building for the purpose of recording meetings.
“This alleged attempt by a Saudi national to steal sensitive communications from OpenAI was taken extremely seriously. Intellectual property theft involving cutting-edge intelligence technology poses a serious threat to our national security,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement on X.
Alfozan made his first court appearance Tuesday on charges of using or attempting to use an electronic, mechanical or other device to intercept oral communications. It was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney who could speak on his behalf. He is due back in court on October 19.
The recording device was found Sept. 30 concealed in toilet paper and inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room, according to the complaint.
Although the conference room where the recording device was found did not have a security camera at the time the device was installed, closed-circuit television footage inside the company’s offices revealed that Alfozan was near the conference room on nearly a dozen occasions last month, despite having no authority to access the space or participate in meetings there, the complaint states.
The company then added a camera to the room that last week captured Alfozan entering and checking behind the television where the recording device had been installed, according to the FBI.
The complaint also alleges that he used a productivity tool to make multiple inquiries about company building addresses, meeting rooms, meeting room capacity and calendars.
Days before his arrest last week, according to the complaint, Alfozan left behind an unattended bag in another room that, when opened by OpenAI staff, contained his wallet, identification and another recording device similar to the one placed in the conference room.
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