WASHINGTON — An OpenAI engineer has been charged with secretly installing a recording device in a company conference room to capture sensitive conversations, federal officials said Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national, was arrested Friday, a week after the device was discovered, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in San Francisco. He is charged with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications.
OpenAI said it used its own AI models to analyze the “sophisticated recording device” and trace it to the employee, who was fired. The company said it has “no indications” that he accessed or took model weights, source code or customer data.
The complaint does not say what Alfozan intended to do with any recordings. The FBI investigation is ongoing.
Sources: Associated Press via KTAR News. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Insightwm / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
