An engineer at OpenAI has been charged with secretly installing a recording device inside a conference room in what officials said Tuesday was an effort to capture sensitive conversations about the company’s technology.
The employee, identified as a 35-year-old Saudi national named Abdulrahman Alfozan, was arrested Friday, a week after the ChatGPT maker discovered an audio recording device hidden inside a company conference room, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in San Francisco.
The complaint did not identify the company, but the company confirmed in a separate statement that it had discovered a “sophisticated recording device that was hidden inside one of our offices,” reported the finding to the FBI and fired the employee.
“We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier. We referred the matter to the FBI, and we’re grateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved 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 indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data. The employee was terminated,” the statement said.
The complaint does not detail what Alfozan might have wanted to do with any captured communications, but the company said the device was sophisticated, designed to evade detection and featured advanced encryption and audio monitoring capabilities. OpenAI said it had evidence the employee planned to place other listening devices throughout 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. Theft of intellectual property involving cutting-edge super 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 a charge of using or endeavoring to use an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf. He is due back in court on Oct. 19.
The recording device was found September 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.
Though the conference room where the recording device was found did not have a security camera at the time the object 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 not having any authority to access the space or participate in meetings there, the complaint says.
The company subsequently 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 the company’s building addresses, meeting rooms, meeting-room capacities and calendars.
Days before his arrest last week, the complaint says, Alfozan left behind an unattended bag in a different room that, when opened by OpenAI personnel, was found to contain his wallet, identification and another recording device similar to the one placed in the conference room.
—Eric Tucker, Associated Press