A Saudi national has been charged with secretly planting a recording system in one of OpenAI’s workplaces in California, federal prosecutors announced.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, who labored at the AI firm as an engineer, was charged federally with utilizing or endeavoring to use an digital, mechanical, or other system to intercept oral communications.
OpenAI said it had found a “sophisticated recording device” hidden in their San Francisco workplace and alerted the FBI. The company said it used its AI fashions to observe that it had been planted by an worker.
Prosecutors say the system, wrapped in toilet paper, was discovered inserted in a USB port on the back of a TV in an government convention room.
OpenAI, the maker of the fashionable chatbot ChatGPT, said that it has no indication that source code, model weights or buyer information were inappropriately accessed or taken in the incident. It said the worker has been fired.
According to the grievance, Alfozan “allegedly concealed a covert recording device inside his employer’s executive conference room to secretly capture sensitive communications,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a assertion.
Patel said that the alleged objective was to seize data about the company’s AI product.
Alfozan has been working as an engineer at OpenAI since July 2025, prosecutors say.
On 30 September, OpenAI staff found the system – two days after prosecutors say it had been put in. The system was encrypted, prosecutors said.
OpenAI said they were ready to use their AI fashions “to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier”.
According to the FBI, the suspect used a “productivity tool” and a “chatbot” to analysis delicate areas at OpenAI and how to secretly place audio gear.
Chatbot prompts that he is alleged to have searched embody “building, customizing, installing, audio recording, testing, obfuscating, and remote accessing a device”, prosecutors allege.
He is also accused of utilizing the chatbot to ask about “‘build[ing] a continuous audio recorder,’ ‘customiz[ing] Wi-Fi . . . connectivity,’ ‘improv[ing] audio and live listening,’ and ‘encrypt[ing] the SD card'”.
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