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Tech, , 4 sources.
Saudi national charged with planting recording device at OpenAI San Francisco office
Federal prosecutors have charged Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national who worked as an OpenAI engineer, with planting a sophisticated encrypted recording device concealed in toilet paper behind a television in an executive conference room at the company's San Francisco headquarters. The device was discovered during a security sweep on September 30, two days after it was allegedly installed, and OpenAI says it used its AI models to identify the employee, who was arrested by the FBI on October 9 and fired the same day. Prosecutors allege he used a productivity tool to research where OpenAI held leadership meetings, ran chatbot prompts about building a continuous audio recorder, and left a bag containing a second recording device elsewhere in the building. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted, and the case underscores concerns that leading AI labs are targets for industrial and foreign espionage seeking technical secrets.
